


The Wyvern

by emmagnetised



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Courtroom Drama, F/M, Family, Gen, Human Experimentation, Humor, Hydra, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, Multi, Nicknames, Original Female Character - Freeform, Protect Dum-E at all costs, Romance, Slow Burn, Stark Siblings - Freeform, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, The Wyvern, Tony Stark's Sister, seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-05-03 19:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 80
Words: 457,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14576214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmagnetised/pseuds/emmagnetised
Summary: Margaret “Maggie” Stark is the newest heir to the Stark legacy, and the bane of Tony’s existence. But once she falls into HYDRA’s hands she becomes the Wyvern: a cybernetically enhanced assassin and operative, programmed to become the greatest weapon of her time.But the Wyvern finds herself pulled between two missions: to obey, or to avenge herself against a metal-armed Soldier she can barely remember?Eventual Bucky/OC.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm a long-time original fiction writer and first-time fanfiction writer, though I have been reading fanfics for ages. Look - I saw Infinity War, I'm Sad™, I decided to work out my feelings by writing out an idea I've had for a while.
> 
> Before we get started, I should mention that this story will deal with experimentation on children, and torture. I could just be jaded by the world, but I don't think it's any worse than what's already canon in the MCU.
> 
> Also, this is a slow burn, for reasons which will be pretty obvious, but we'll get there eventually. I promise.  
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> PS: I know I'm playing a bit fast and loose with biological clocks here. Howard Stark would be 69 years old in 1986, but Maria doesn't have a listed date of birth in the MCU wiki, so for the sake of this story she's going to be around 50 - by no means a spring chicken, but still likely to have a healthy baby with the best help that 1986 science has to offer.
> 
> Posting weekly, but may update early every now and then.

June 2nd, 1986  
Stark Mansion, Manhattan

“Hey, Tony? You in here?” James Rhodes poked his head through the door of Howard Stark’s workshop, smoothing back his jacket. He’d been to the mansion before, but only ever with Tony to show him around. Today he’d come because Tony hadn’t returned to MIT after the weekend, and wasn’t picking up the phone. So Rhodes had driven himself on down to New York to check on him. He was nice like that. Of course, he’d started feeling less nice and more like a visitor to a foreign nation when aides and assistants and a very suspicious butler questioned his intentions and then finally let him into the workshop.

Of course, there Tony was: sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the enormous workshop, peering down the length of a metal tube with a torch in his mouth and a screwdriver in his hand. He looked like he hadn’t slept or washed in a day or so; his mop of dark hair was straggled across his forehead, and there was a large oil stain on his sweater. A warzone of metal parts, tools and wiring radiated out from where he sat.

“I don’t know why I bothered,” Rhodes sighed, picking his way through the mess of mechanics.

The genius sixteen-year-old finally glanced up, and Rhodes saw the redness in his eyes. “Rhodey!” Tony mumbled out around the torch in his mouth, then dropped the metal tube on his foot. “Ah, shit.”

“Hey Tony,” Rhodes greeted, then squatted down by his friend. There was a boxy computer hooked up to parts of the machinery, running lines of green code. “You get caught up in your robot again? Forget which day of the week it is?”

Tony shrugged, and finally took the torch out of his mouth. “Nah.”

 “You weren’t answering the phone.”

Tony looked over his shoulder, and Rhodes followed his gaze to see the workshop phone hanging from its cord. “Ah. That’d be why, then. Come on, man, what gives?”

Tony picked up a circuit board and began attacking it with a soldering iron. “My mom gave birth today.”

“Holy shit!” Rhodes exclaimed. He hadn’t even considered that as a possibility for Tony’s absence, and he’d heard of little else over the past nine months – not so much from Tony, who got ornery and mouthy whenever it was brought up, but the news (and many of their college professors) were excited by the prospect of another Stark child. Especially so late in Howard’s life, the kid was being hailed as a ‘miracle baby’. Rhodes privately thought it would be a miracle if Tony and his new sibling got through their respective childhoods without multiple complexes. “And it’s… I mean… is it…”

Tony rolled his eyes. “ _It_ is a girl, they called her ‘Margaret Abigail Stark.’” He snorted. “It’s an old lady’s name.”

“It ain’t much better than ‘Anthony’.” Rhodes was rewarded when Tony threw a bolt at him without looking up from the circuit board.

“I heard them arguing a few weeks ago about girls names, mom asked him to name one woman he hadn’t slept with.” He snorted again, and then hissed when the soldering iron nicked his finger. “I guess they went with that theme.”

“Did you go to the hospital?”

“Nah. Dad called and told me to come visit, but…” Tony gestured at the dangling phone, and then at the chaos around him. “I’m busy.”

Rhodes sat back, narrowly avoiding knocking over the computer, and watched his friend mangle the circuit board while pretending to repair it. James Rhodes was not a genius, as he was reminded nearly every day, but even he recognised a faulty solder joint when he saw it.

“Hey Tony,” Rhodes eventually said, cocking his head.

“Yeah?”

“You stink. Go get in the shower, and I’ll track down your weird fancy butler and get him to make you a cup of coffee.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “What then?”

“Then I’m going to drive you to the hospital. C’mon,” Rhodes got to his feet, and offered Tony a hand. Thankfully he took it, only narrowly missing taking out Rhodes’s ankle with the soldering iron. “Alright, buddy. You’re going to meet your sister.”

 

It didn’t turn out to be as much of a disaster as Rhodes expected, after nine months of surly looks and underage drinking.

He made supremely awkward small talk with Howard Stark in the squeaky corridor of the hospital, trying to get glimpses through the door of Maria Stark’s private suite. The antiseptic hospital smell made him nervous, and Howard Stark talking about Tony’s “potential” made him doubly so. He did manage to get a few glimpses of Tony holding what must have been the baby, though – Tony peered down at the bundle of blankets with an unreadable look, arms stiff and feet shifting. Rhodes had seen him hold a flaming carburettor with more comfort. And possibly more affection.

Later, when Tony finished updating his dad on the progress of the robot, they walked out of the hospital and back to Rhodes’s car.

“Well?” Rhodes asked, jangling his keys in his pocket.

Tony wrinkled his nose. “She was _purple_. And wrinkly. And like, completely bald. I’m going to have an eggplant for a sister.”

Rhodes laughed, and laughed harder – mostly in relief – when Tony joined in. “I’m pretty sure that goes away, man. I saw my sister’s baby a couple years back right after it was born and it looked like an alien. But he’s mostly normal now.”

“Mostly?”

“Well he won’t shut up about _E.T.,_ so you never know…”

 

* * *

 

A few months later Tony’s robot – of course – won him the MIT Robot Design Award. He got in the paper, and that sparked a new wave of excitement about the “future of Stark weaponry”. Tony and Rhodes mostly spent their time in class, or crashed frat parties and either got kicked out when someone recognised Tony and remembered he was only sixteen, or got offered more beers. Rhodes had also started a pre-Officer Training weekend program with the Air Force, so Tony ended up back in his father’s workshop in New York more often than not. One Sunday Rhodes once again found himself being ushered into the mansion and interrogated by the nosy butler.

“I’m starting to think this workshop is foreign soil or something,” Rhodes called as he strode toward the door. But he stopped in his tracks when he heard something he did not expect to hear coming from the workshop: laughter. And not Tony’s laughter, or even Howard’s (which Rhodes did not think he’d ever heard in his earthly life, so you never knew), but a _baby’s._ Rhodes crept up to the workshop door and peeked inside.

The scene before him was like a bizarre family portrait: Tony’s robot was bolted to the floor in the middle of the workshop (which was a lot cleaner than the last time Rhodes had visited). Rhodes had seen the thing in action plenty of times, and now it was folded double, pointed at the floor, nodding its ‘head’ and opening and closing its three claws in a motion that Rhodes could only describe as “grabby hands”. Beneath its claws, lying on her stomach and wearing a paisley floral onesie, lay Margaret Stark – or Maggie, as her parents had nicknamed her. Her head was craned back so she could look up at the inquisitive robot, and she laughed and squealed at it as it flexed its claws and whirred at her. She was a cute kid, with wisps of brown hair, gleaming dark eyes and kicking feet. Tony stood a few feet to the side, hands on his hips as he looked down at his giggling sister like she was a machine part he couldn’t comprehend.

Rhodes found himself chuckling at the laughing, dark-haired baby, the excited robot and the bewildered Tony. He stepped into the workshop, and laughed even harder when Tony looked up, saw he was caught, and immediately hustled back to his workbench covered in engine parts.

“So I see you’re hanging out with your sister,” Rhodes eventually noted, following Tony to the workbench and looking over his shoulder at the robot and the baby as they cooed at each other.

“Well mom and dad went to meet with the mayor and then we got in a whole thing about how I still had a nanny until two years ago – don’t laugh – so they said fine, and this… is my punishment.” Tony waved a screwdriver at his baby sister on the concrete floor.

“Is she going to be alright there?” Rhodes asked.

“Hm? Oh, she’s supposed to have tummy-time or whatever, so I swept the workshop floor and put her in the clearest space. Just happened to be next to Dum-E, and he won’t hurt her – he’s not programmed to pick up anything larger than a camera, and if he pokes her in the eye she’ll learn an early lesson about the dangers of artificial intelligence.”

Rhodes watched the robot as it spun 360 degrees and made an extended whirring noise, causing Maggie to erupt back into peals of laughter as she wriggled her fingers. He was pretty sure that Tony was joking, and that he wouldn’t have brought his sister within ten feet of the robot if there was a chance of it hurting her. Like, 90% sure.

“You gave it a name, huh?”

“Yeah, she needed one for her birth certificate.”

“Ha, ha. I mean the robot. Dummy, or whatever. You’re keeping it around, then?”

Tony looked up from his work on a bent gasket, and eyed his robot as it played with his sister. “Yeah, I think so. Seems useful.”

A moment later, he swore loudly after spilling a can of oil across the workbench. “Anyway,” he went on, “have you seen _Top Gun_ yet?”

“I’m joining the Air Force, Tony, what do you think?”

 

* * *

 

June, 1987  
Stark Mansion, Manhattan

Tony Stark graduated MIT to much fanfare at the age of seventeen, and moved back to New York to continue tinkering in Howard’s workshop. Howard himself wasn’t in there often, splitting his time between a project in D.C., running Stark Industries from Los Angeles, and the mansion in New York. Maria stayed in New York, raising Maggie in conjunction with an army of nannies and running Manhattan’s social scene. A few weeks after moving back, Tony was arm-deep in the bonnet of a 1927 Ford when Maggie burst into the workshop in a bright purple smock, waddling as fast as her fat little legs could carry her. “To-neeee!” she cried, flashing a toothy smile as she pattered across the concrete floor.

“No,” he said, holding up a screwdriver. “No, Maggot, you’re not meant to be in here.”

“To-neeee!” she cried again, reaching the car and making grabby hands at wiring looped out of the engine.

“No, you don’t even know what those are.” Tony pinched his nose and looked around helplessly for a nanny. Christ, was this how his parents felt?

“Engine!” Maggie squawked, now trying to pull herself up onto the bonnet.

“Well you’re not wrong,” Tony sighed, pulling her hands away and directing her out to the workshop floor. “Go play with an angle grinder or something, quit coming in here.”

“Dum-E!”

Tony sighed as Dum-E heard his name, popped his head up from behind a dusty computer bank and squealed at the purple-smocked baby giggling on the workshop floor.

“Dum-E play!” He trundled over – Tony suddenly regretted making the idiot machine mobile – and leaned down to let her grab at his claws and pull his wiring.

“Hey, you, whats-your-name, Margarita – leave him alone! You break one of those wires and his IQ drops another ten points.” Neither the baby nor the robot paid him any mind, so he groaned and went back to his engine.

Fifteen minutes later Jarvis burst through the door, all gangly limbs and greying hair, his perpetually-anxious expression a little deeper, and pressed a hand to his heart when he spotted Maggie trying to climb Dum-E.

“Oh good heavens, Miss Stark, thank goodness I’ve found you!”

At the sound of his British accent Maggie let go of Dum-E and faced the door. “Jargles!” she lifted her arms in the air and wiggled her fingers.

Tony snorted. Jarvis looked over to the car, and smiled. “Oh hello, young Master Stark, I see you’re watching over your sister. She’s got a terrible habit of running off and getting herself into trouble. Reminds me of your aunt Peggy. She was here recently, did you see her?” Jarvis made his way over to Maggie and picked her up, smoothing down her smock and poking her nose.

Tony shrugged. “Yeah. She somehow knew about the thing I did in Jersey-” Tony acknowledged Jarvis’s ‘ _ah_ ’ with a grimace “- and she called Maggie a ‘delightful wailing nuisance’, which I still haven’t really wrapped my head around.”

“What an _excellent_ woman,” Jarvis said fondly, then began bouncing Maggie as she started to live up to her epithet and wail. “Ah, come now Miss Stark, you’ll be alright.”

“Jargles!” she sobbed, gesturing at nothing in particular.

“Ugh, Jarvis, get her out, she’s upsetting Dum-E.”

Jarvis inspected the robot, which was inspecting a Twinkie wrapper on the ground, and raised an eyebrow. “I see. Well come on then, Miss Stark, you’ll have your day in the workshop yet. For now, I see a spot of lunch in your future. Cheerio, Master Stark!”

“Bye, Jarvis,” Tony mumbled, banging an intake pipe against the ground in an effort to straighten it. “Bye, Marzipan.”

Once they’d left, he threw a clamp at Dum-E to stop him trying to shove the Twinkie wrapper into his own wheel mount. “Stop it, you idiot. Ugh, Dum-E, I think that’s the first conversation I’ve had with another human in the past two weeks where they haven’t compared the Maggot to whatever I was doing at that age. I’m not competing with a one-year-old.”

Dum-E threw down the wrapper and ran over it, whistling.

Tony pointed the pipe at him. “Exactly.”

 

* * *

 

Over the next few years, Margaret Stark followed closely in her brother’s footsteps, tinkering with mechanics and computers whenever she could. She too built her own circuit board a few months after her fourth birthday. She started her first year of school in third grade, finding, as Tony had, that there wasn’t really a place for the Stark kind of genius in education based on age groups.

She learned to write in English and in two programming languages at the same time. Her father set her ‘projects’ to further her engineering advancement, as he had with Tony, and got frustrated when they were still a little too advanced for her, or when she got bored and started playing with Dum-E instead. The only reason Howard didn’t have Dum-E moved from the workshop, to Tony’s horror, was that Maggie got frustrated at her lack of accurate fine motor control when it came to mechanics, and used Dum-E’s help to build things. When she did complete the projects, Howard paraded her and her newest creation across the mansion and shot pointed looks at Tony. When she wasn’t living up to the Stark legacy, the toddler followed her mother around asking complicated questions, and only shut up when Maria taught her how to play piano, or when they watched movies together.

Jarvis could often be heard exclaiming that he’d had enough trouble looking after one Stark, let alone _three,_ and yet gleefully followed each Stark in their ventures, ready with a sandwich and a fire extinguisher. Tony generally avoided his sister, when he could, and attempted to ignore the many comparisons being drawn between the two of them. It wasn’t a coincidence, however, that he began working for Stark Industries in earnest once Maggie started to put engine parts together. He travelled back and forth between L.A. and New York, working on weaponry projects.

 

November 1990  
Stark Industries Headquarters, Los Angeles

“What’re you doing, Tony?”

Tony groaned under his breath, and hoped that Maggie would take the blaring Van Halen as a hint and leave.

No such luck: “Tony, you seen _Peter Pan_?” She was four and a half years old, with a shock of dark brown hair that filled his vision as she pulled herself up onto the workbench via his chair.

“Yes, Margarine. I have seen _Peter Pan_. Stop moving.” He winced as he maneuvered a particularly tricky bit of wiring into its housing. 

“I need help working out how to fly. The movie says you need pixie dust but I know that isn’t real, and there’s got to be other ways-”

“Wow, you are not ready to hear about planes, kid.”

“I mean single-person flight, Tony, like _Peter Pan_! Aren’t you listening?”

“No.”

“I want to _fly-_ ”

“I could throw you off the roof, you’d fly for a little while.”

“Dad just said I should look into jet packs, so I’m making some models, but Jarvis said that the only jet pack he ever saw exploded, and jet packs don’t have the maneuv’rability I’m thinking of, so-”

“Maggot, I’m _busy_. I don’t want to make jet packs.”

“Neither do I!”

“Then go the hell away.”

There was a long pause as Tony peered through a magnifying glass at the wiring, tapping his finger to the beat of _Hot For Teacher._ Maggie sat on the workbench, watching him work with the precision tools, chewing her lip. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a horrific spotted shirt that her mom must have picked out. She was barefoot, but Tony decided not to point out the workshop safety violation because he was too. And kind of buzzed, but he wasn’t going to bring that up with the four-year-old either.

“What’re you working on?” Maggie eventually asked, picking up a sheaf of blueprints with a coffee stain on them.

Tony sighed. “It’s a missile. Dad’s going to be selling it to the army in a few months, I’m making improvements. Or committing crimes against engineering, depends who you ask.”

Maggie leaned over the open hull of the missile and peered into it. Tony didn’t even yell at her for getting her stupid head in the way because he was startled by the keen, assessing quality in her eyes.

After a long moment, she leaned back and asked: “Is it going to ‘splode?”

Tony blinked. “Yeah.”

She nodded. “That’s pretty good. When are you going to ‘splode this one?”

“Uh, probably not until the weapons demonstration.” At Maggie’s crestfallen look, he put down the precision tool. “But, uh, I’ve got a few demo models over here that could be useful for future projections.”

Maggie sat up. “You’re going to ‘splode them!”

“ _We’re_ going to ‘splode them. C’mon, Magnesium.”

 

Surprisingly, Howard didn’t yell at Tony about detonating several very high-powered explosions in the demonstration bay with his four-year-old sister. He _did_ yell at him, however, when he walked into the workshop to find Dum-E holding Maggie three metres up in the air as an industrial fan blew the tarpaulin cape tied to her shoulders.

 

* * *

 

May 29th, 1991  
Tribeca Rooftop Venue, Manhattan

“Tony, you can’t be the first person to leave your own party,” Rhodes hissed into his friend’s ear as they moved through the businessmen, socialites, politicians and defence force members that made up the guests of the event. The rooftop was filled with the rumble of polite chatter, and very tasteful violin music.

“I’m turning twenty-one, shouldn’t the party follow me wherever I go? Say, for example, to another party not hosted by my parents?” The parents in question were at opposite ends of the rooftop, entertaining their guests with flutes of champagne. Rhodes didn’t fail to notice that whenever Maria looked Tony’s way she would smile faintly, and when Howard looked (far less often) he would scowl. Howard had managed to convince Tony to wear a tuxedo, but Tony had finished off the look with an enormous pair of sunglasses in the shape of beer flagons.

“Ugh, there are literally no women here below my mom’s age, Rhodey, what am I _doing_ here?”

“You’re being celebrated. And anyway, that’s not true, what about her?” Rhodes gestured to a woman about their age sitting in the lap of an old man in a wheelchair.

“Huh,” Tony said, tilting his head down so he could look over the rim of his beer-glasses. “I might have a shot there.”

“Tony, no. Ew.”

Half an hour later, Rhodes had gotten separated from Tony because he’d spotted a very senior Air Force General and had literally noticed nothing else until he was shaking the man’s hand and politely introducing himself. He was starting to worry that Tony had bailed without him until he spotted the beer glasses through the crowd.

As he pushed through, he heard a high voice speaking animatedly: “But why did you use the Backward Euler method to solve the heat equation for the gas turbine, you said it wasn’t accurate enough for the last turbine you designed!” Rhodes spotted Maggie finally, wearing a neatly pressed blue dress that already had a huge, powdery stain on it, and clutching her brother’s suit jacket with a furious expression on her face.

Tony was trying to get to a waiter’s tray of champagne. “Because it’s immune to spurious oscillations, oh my god, go to school to learn this stuff and leave me alone, Magellan.” Tony finally snagged a flute of champagne and knocked it back while simultaneously trying to free his jacket from Maggie’s clutches.

“Hey, you two,” Rhodes said, straightening his uniform. “Tony, I thought you left.”

“I tried to, but I was apprehended by a very small, very annoying pit of stupid questions.”

Maggie either did not hear or did not care about this comment, as she seemed to be contemplating the matter of spurious oscillations. After a moment of silence, Rhodes cleared his throat.

“Uh, hi, Maggie, nice to meet you again.” He offered his hand to the almost-five-year-old, who blinked and then put her hand in his. She shook it with a surprisingly strong grip. Her dark eyes were startlingly intelligent for such a small kid, and Rhodes could see that she was uncomfortable about meeting an apparent stranger. Tony was being no help, so he added: “I haven’t seen you since you were this small!” He estimated the size of the three-month-old Maggie with his hands.

She eyed him with very poorly concealed disdain. “Explains why I don’t remember you.”

“Yeah, uh, I haven’t been around the mansion much, it’s like trying to get into Fort Knox. I don’t think your butler likes me very much.”

“Jarvis is an excellent judge of character,” Maggie said.

While Rhodes was just trying to work out how the hell he just got burned by a _four year old_ , Tony finally tuned back into the conversation.

“Oh yeah. Maggot, this is my friend Rhodes. Rhodey, Maggot.” Tony waved the air between them like a conductor.

Maggie squinted at Rhodes from under her dark fringe. “Y’know, roads are s’posed to be named after people, not the other way around,” she eventually told him.

Rhodes blinked, and looked to Tony for help, but Tony was eyeing a pair of women close to his age at the bar.

“Um, my name’s James Rhodes, actually,” he eventually said, and spelled it out. “I think it’s for the place, y’know, in Greece, not… roads.”

“Hm,” she said, still squinting at him. Her dark eyes flicked down to his uniform. “You in the army?”

Before Rhodes could correct her, she was called away by Obadiah Stane, and then Tony made his escape from the party after giving his mother a noisy kiss on the cheek in front of the Secretary of State.

“C’mon, Rhodey,” Tony proclaimed as they clanged down a fire escape, “Follow the party!”

Rhodes mourned the connections he could have made at the party for a moment, then remembered that someone needed to make sure Tony didn’t end up facedown in the Hudson by the end of the night. Plus, Tony had a knack for finding great parties.

 

Tony did end up in the Hudson by the end of the night, but that was because they’d crashed a party cruise ship and Tony had fallen in the river after trying to climb the neon flagpole.  Two beautiful women pulled him out, however, so he claimed it was worth it. The next morning Rhodes pulled Tony out of a New York University sorority, and got him back to the mansion.

With Tony’s very hungover directions, they evaded the Stark parents and the nosy butler, and snuck into a lesser-used kitchenette to sober up.

“Hey Tony,” came a young voice from behind them as they slipped through the door of the kitchenette.

Rhodes and Tony both jumped, and spun around just as Maggie strode past them.  She was dressed in stripey flannel pyjamas. “Hey Rhodey,” she added, heading to the fridge.

“Ugh, Magnet, what are you doing,” Tony groaned, slumping toward the table and falling into a chair with his hand over his eyes.

“Getting orange juice,” said Maggie, opening the fridge. She was only just tall enough to reach the juice, manoeuvring it out of its shelf with her fingertips. “Thanks for leaving your party super early, Dad got mad and started making me talk to old guys.”

“Give me orange juice,” Tony mumbled.

“You’re too old for orange juice.” Maggie carefully poured herself a glass.

Rhodes closed the kitchenette door behind him, and poured two glasses of water. He passed one to Tony as he sat down.

“Hey, Rhodey?” Maggie sat at the last seat at the table with a glass of orange juice as large as her head.

“Yeah?”

“I looked up that Rhodes place. It’s covered in ruins.” Her eyes were serious as she looked across the table at him.

“Oh.”

“But I found out that there used to be this island in Egypt-” Maggie paused to defend her orange juice from Tony’s half-hearted grab – “that the Pharaoh called Antirhodos. It means basically anti – Rhodes, because the Egyptians really hated Rhodes. So they named an island to prove how much they hated it.” She took a long drink of her orange juice after that, eyeballing him.

“Um,” Rhodes said. He glanced to Tony for help, and was alarmed to see that the young genius was shaking – a moment later, he lifted his head and revealed that he was laughing. Tony clutched his head and laughed, all the while grabbing for the orange juice.

“Oh my god,” Tony said, “Antirhodos! I’m going to use this, Rhodey, oh my god.”

“Don’t,” Rhodes said weakly. (Unfortunately, later that week Tony placed “Antirhodos” signs above the door of his workshop, over several prominent New York City clubs, and over the aircraft hangar that Rhodes worked in.)

But on that morning, Maggie’s short history lesson appeared to have brought Tony back from the dead somewhat, so he got up and poured himself a glass of orange juice. Rhodes tried to cast around for a change of subject, so the Stark daughter would stop roasting him.

“Uh, Maggie, you asked last night if I was in the army. I’m actually in the Air Force.”

She put her glass down with a loud _clink_ that made Tony wince. “You can _fly_?”

“Oh god,” said Tony, sinking back into his seat.

The next ten minutes were filled with what felt like hundreds of questions about Rhodes’s flying capabilities, his thoughts on unmanned airflight, what flying felt like, the kinds of planes he flew, and the fastest he’d ever gone in the air.

“Well maybe I ought to take you up some time,” he eventually offered, thrown off by her sudden change from thinly veiled mistrust to avid admiration.

Her eyes were wide. “Flying? You’d let me fly a plane?”

“Well I’d fly the plane, but you could come with-”

“Jeez, Rhodey,” Tony cut in, “asking a guy’s sister out right in front of him, that’s cold.”

This led to at least twenty minutes of Rhodey-roasting by Tony and Maggie, the two of them often using language that went way over his head.

That morning was the one that James Rhodes realized the Stark siblings were going to be a force to be reckoned with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Australian, but attempting to write with American spelling & formatting to keep in line with canon (send my apologies to the Queen). So please excuse any slip-ups!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back a little early because I'm excited!
> 
> So from here on out the story will be mostly from Maggie's POV. It's a bit of a change-up from the previous chapter, in POV and in tone - unfortunately I won't get a lot of chances for humor in the next few chapters, though I will do my utmost to not make it dark and depressing the whole time. I feel like the MCU has a great blend of comedy, action, and tearing people's hearts out, so I'll try to live up to that.
> 
> Also this one's a bit longer than my usual chapters will be, but I wanted to get the story started!
> 
> We ended last chapter mid-1991. You know what – or rather, who – is coming.

December 16th, 1991  
Stark Mansion, Manhattan.

Later, when recalling that afternoon using his Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing, Tony saw a tense but calm scene: his mother played the piano and sang, his father walked in with Maggie in tow, casting passive-aggressive barbs in his direction. Maggie, a vibrant five-year-old with a dark brown braid and keen eyes, giggled at Tony's joke about throwing a toga party before climbing the piano stool to perch by her mother.

When his mother stood and warned him to "say something. If you don't, you'll regret it," he told his father that he loved him. He told his mother that he knew she did the best she could. And he allowed his little sister to hug him on the way out, saying "I'll miss you, Maggie. Be good."

In reality, the traded barbs with Howard led to Tony shouting at his parents and storming out of the room while Maggie watched, crying. Tony didn't remember the last thing he said to Maggie, only that he'd felt sick at himself, as he always did, for yelling at mom and dad in front of her, and deeply jealous that dad still had hope for her. Before he knew it, his mom had whisked his dad and sister out of the house, and he watched the car drive away with a bottle of whiskey already in his hand.

 

* * *

 

Maggie stopped crying by the time night fell, instead choosing to watch the trees darken and fall into shadow outside the car window. Before they'd left the mansion, mom turned in her seat to stroke Maggie's cheek, and offered her a smile. At that, dad had said "Don't mind your brother, Maggie. He's got a lot of growing to do."

Mom and dad spoke intermittently for the rest of the trip about things Maggie didn't care about – someone in the White House they had to call, arrangements for their stay in the Bahamas. Sometimes she asked questions, like: "what kind of plane will you be flying us in, dad?" and "why did my programming tutor use MATLAB instead of Mathematica for my last project?" After the fifth question, dad asked for some quiet time, so she pressed her lips together to remind herself not to ask anything. She brought her feet up onto her seat, curled in a ball behind her mother, and watched the scenery flash by.

She'd never been to the Bahamas before. She'd travelled a lot more than the other kids at school, to places like L.A., London, and Beijing, but she didn't really get to sight see – most of the time she was sat in the waiting room of an office building with a book. She was more excited about the Pentagon, but she didn't think she'd be let out of the car for that. She thought she might try to sneak out of the car while Dad was inside, just to get a better look. She'd be able to tell Tony about what she saw, and he might explain it for her. He once told her that he'd hacked into the Pentagon in high school.

She already missed Tony. She always missed him. And now she wouldn't get to have Christmas with him. She also missed Dum-E and Jarvis. Maybe she could make her own Dum-E in the Bahamas, so she wouldn't get lonely. But she couldn't make a Jarvis. Or a Tony.

Maggie was wondering how people got made, while simultaneously reminding herself not to ask about it, when she heard the rumble of the motorbike behind them. She lifted her head to watch it go past – she wanted to see what kind of engine it had – and saw a man's face surrounded by dark hair, a flash of metal, and then the world lurched around her.

Metal crunched and glass shattered. Maggie was flung forward in her seat, and the world went fuzzy around the edges. It felt a bit like when she'd accidentally set off a small rocket while she was still holding it: all she could hear was the ringing in her own head, and time felt sluggish, dripping around her instead of pulling her with it.

"Howard!" she heard mom cry, when her head got a bit clearer. "Maggie, say something!"

Maggie tried, but pain erupted in her head, blooming from a spot above her right eyebrow and reverberating to the back of her skull. As if that pain was an invitation, the rest of her body began to hurt, from a pressing ache in her chest and hips to a sharper pain in her leg. She was slumped in her seat, one leg flung forward and the other stuck under her hips.

Orange light was flickering beyond her eyelids, and sound began to trickle back in – she registered the roaring of a fire, and her mom making a weird noise. With a struggle, Maggie opened her eyes and squinted at the front seat. First she saw dad, his head turned toward mom. The only way she recognised him was by his white hair, because there was only red where his face should be.

"Dad?" Maggie croaked, and looked to the right. There was a man with a metal arm standing outside mom's door, reaching through her window. The man wore some kind of black leather armor. Mom was gasping and spluttering, and Maggie registered the hand around her neck. "Mom?"

Maggie tried to see the man's face, but he wasn't even looking into the car. "Stop it!" She tried to sit up to push the man's arm away, but he had already let go of mom, and mom had stopped making noises. Maggie pulled at her seat belt, feeling tears begin to slide down her face. The world was still ringing, and the fire was hurting her eyes, but she knew that she had to do something. Her heart suddenly registered itself as a frantic drum in her chest. The man with the metal arm stepped toward her door.

Maggie finally wriggled free of her seat belt, screaming between her teeth when her leg twisted and a bolt of pain shot up her spine. Her head pulsed, making her vision fuzzy. She scooted across the back seat by feel, then opened the door and fell out of the car, crying out. Even over the sound of the fire she could hear gravel crunching as the man with the metal arm walked around the car. Gasping, Maggie scrambled to her feet, sending gravel flying, and ran for the road. She was the third-fastest girl in her class, but the man caught her in only a few strides, barely seeming to move at all.

"No!" Maggie screamed, her heart racing as she waited for him to hit her, or grab her throat. But he only seized her upper arm and dragged her back to the car. She looked up at his face – it was framed by long dark hair, and was utterly blank. He didn't even look at her. "Let me go!"

Heels skidding in the gravel, Maggie pummelled her free fist into the man's side, but it came away bloody and the man didn't seem to notice. The hand around her arm wasn't made of metal, but it felt like iron as she tried to wriggle out of his grasp. While she twisted and tried to kick him, the man grabbed something from his motorbike, then carried it and Maggie back to the car. He put the thing where Maggie had been sitting, and she stilled enough to look at it.

It was a little girl, about her age, slumped in the seat. The girl's eyes looked like the man's: grey-blue, and blank. But Maggie knew this girl wasn't alive. There was dried blood crusted beneath her eyes, nose, and mouth, and in her hair.

A new kind of fear prickled over Maggie now. It was cold, and seemed to lock her muscles in place, so she couldn't look away from the girl's frozen, dead, eyes.

Maggie didn't get her feet under her in time to keep up with the man as he moved again, and she slumped in his grip, sobbing. It didn't matter. He dragged her through the gravel by her arm as he made a final circle of the car, sloshing liquid from a flask on his belt. Maggie's nose flared at the chemical smell – kerosene or gasoline, but not quite. She grabbed at one of the buckles on the man's vest to haul herself to her feet, crying at the pain, and tried to yank her arm free again. "Stop! Please, stop!"

But the burning engine had tasted the fluid, and the whole car went up in a whoosh of flame that ripped the breath from Maggie's chest and seared her retinas. She let out a long wail, trying to see her parents. They were only shadows, consumed by fire.

She flinched as a deafening crack erupted – it sounded like thunder, but her father was a weapons contractor: she knew what a gunshot sounded like. She twisted once more and saw the man holding a smoking gun in his metal hand. She followed its aim to a nearby street camera. Maggie looked back at the man's face, but it was still blank. She couldn't read him at all.

"Why are you doing this?" Maggie whispered, choking on the smoke and tears in her throat.

Finally, finally, he acknowledged her. He holstered his gun and looked down at her, emotionless, with only the hint of a furrow in his brow. The fire was reflected in his eyes, but Maggie didn't feel like there was a fire inside this man. It was like he was hardly here at all.

But then he spoke: "You are my mission."

He turned and dragged her back to his motorbike, but Maggie hardly felt it. Her entire body was alight with pain, and her brilliant mind was caught on the image of her father's bloody face and the sound of her mother's gasps. The fire roared in her ears and flickered like a sunburn on her skin.

A wave of fury suddenly erupted in Maggie's stomach, stronger than anything she'd ever known – it gave her the strength to yank against the man with all her might, to kick and push at him every last step of the way back to the motorbike. It still made no difference: he swung her onto the seat and climbed on behind her, gunning the engine. Maggie slumped forward. Her fury scorched her insides with no way to be channelled at the man; impotent. As the man and his motorbike took her away from the fire, from her parents and the dead girl, Maggie clenched her fists.

Over the roar of the engine and the shrieking of the wind, the man heard her whisper: "You're my mission now."

 

* * *

 

The man drove for hours. Maggie didn't watch the road, didn't think about where they might be going. Her mind could handle advanced mathematics and engineering, could even sometimes keep up with her dad and brother, but on that night it ground to a halt. There was nothing but the pain shrieking across her body, and a cyclone of emotions coursing through her heart. She cried until she couldn't see, couldn't swallow, unable to process what had just happened to her.

Somehow, impossibly, she slept. Her body simply shut down, sheltering her from the pain. The man with the metal arm held her firmly in her seat, eyes focused ahead as they rode through the night.

When she woke they were still driving. The man with the metal arm had his hand against her throat, and for a moment she thought he was going to choke her, like he'd choked her mom. But he had only two fingers pressed to her pulse, which he soon removed. Maggie hung her head, shivering against the cold wind. She felt numb; physically and emotionally.

The sun broke over the horizon to their right, and Maggie winced at the light, feeling raw.

Her head was a little clearer, but all she could think was  _mom and dad are dead. I want Tony._  Those two thoughts manifested in a deep ache in her chest, and she hunched further in her seat.

The man with the metal arm drove them through a snow-capped forest and came to the edge of a bay; the water a dark blue in the dawn light. Maggie couldn't see any signs of buildings or civilization besides the dirt road that brought them here, and a dinghy with an outboard motor moored at the beach. The man turned off the motorbike, and the sudden lack of the engine vibrating felt like a slap in the face. The air was cold and clear, and there was silence but for the lapping of water on the rocky shore.

The man climbed off the bike, holding Maggie steady with one hand, and removed a briefcase from the back. She only dimly recognized the briefcase as belonging to her father before the man scooped her into his arms, like Jarvis did when he was putting her to bed. She was too startled and too numb to resist. She watched the man's face as he carried her across the beach and lay her in the boat: the same empty expression he'd had before, aimed straight ahead. But he didn't jostle her wounds when he carried her and was careful putting her down. The freezing metal hull of the boat pressed against her sore skin.

When the man gunned the outboard motor and steered them out onto the ocean, Maggie considered climbing over the lip of the boat and jumping into the water to swim away. But she was already so cold – she'd only been wearing a jacket to protect against the New York December, and wherever she was now was much colder. And she knew that this empty man with a mission would not let her get away. So she lay where he'd put her, looking up at the sky.

Maggie didn't see the route the speedboat took, but after what seemed like hours she noticed huge cliffs rising up on either side of the boat. With a groan, she sat up and looked around.

They must have crossed the ocean to an island. The dinghy motored up a river cutting between two soaring cliff faces, slate grey and topped with snow-shrouded pines. The purring of the outboard motor echoed back and forth across the ravine, sending a shudder down Maggie's spine. The cliffs seemed to lean in towards her, crowding out the sky, as the man with the metal arm steered them resolutely on.

After peering around at the cliffs, Maggie turned to scrutinise her kidnapper more closely. His metal arm gleamed silver in the sunlight, and she noticed a scarlet star emblazoned on the shoulder. Apart from the arm he was dressed entirely in black; a heavy-looking suit with buckles and pockets and weapons stashed across it. She eyed a knife on his ankle, but almost as soon as she noticed it, the ankle shifted. Her eyes flicked up to the man's face, and she flinched when she saw his steely-blue eyes locked on her. His gaze was intense, as if he could read her mind. Maggie shrank back, and his eyes flicked back up to the river ahead.

She didn't look at his knife again, but she continued to assess the man. His long brown hair was lank around his ears, and there was stubble along his clenched jaw, like the kind her dad got when he spent too long in the workshop. He was rigid and intent as he sat beside the outboard motor, every muscle of his body focused on his goal. What his goal might be, Maggie had no idea. She'd been warned about people who might want to take her because her parents had a lot of money, but surely if this metal-armed man had wanted money he wouldn't have...

Maggie flinched as the image of her father's bloody face jumped to the front of her mind. To push it away, she sat up further in the boat, wrapped her arms around her bruised knees, and watched the water lapping against the granite cliffs.

The man with the metal arm steered them resolutely on, and after a few minutes reached down to press a button set into the side of the boat. Maggie stared at it, then him, and then jumped when a new, louder mechanical sound echoed in the ravine. She spun around, eyes wide. A whole section of the rocky cliff was  _moving_ , sliding upwards on hinges that had seemed invisible before. When the false rock wall had risen high enough, revealing a cave with lights inside it, the man steered the boat inside.

It wasn't like anything Maggie had ever seen. Beyond the cliff face was an enormous space, like an airport hangar. The walls were the same layered granite as the cliffs outside, but the floor was concrete. There was a small water inlet where several other boats were docked, and it was there that the man steered the boat. Maggie stared around at the cave, peering at the fluorescent lights installed on the ceiling, the pipes running along the walls and ground, the half-cylinder tunnels leading out of the cave. And the armed men assembling at the dock.

There were five men in white and grey camouflage uniforms, cradling rifles in their arms as they watched the boat approach. Maggie eyed them nervously. Rhodes had taught her about the different uniforms used by the armed forces, and these didn't match up with anything that she recognised. After the man with the metal arm docked the dinghy and stood up, one of the men with guns shifted his weight and spoke:

" _Rapport, Soldat_." [ _"Report, Soldier."_ ]

Maria had been teaching Maggie and Tony French for the last two years.  _So he's a soldier_ , Maggie realised, and filed the information away.

" _Mission réussie_ ," [ _"Mission successful,"_ ] the metal-armed soldier said, taking Maggie's arm in one hand and the briefcase in the other, and stepping from the dinghy to the concrete floor. " _Extraction terminée, pas de témoins_." [" _Extraction completed, no witnesses."_ ]

 _No witnesses._ The fury inside Maggie flared again – he had killed her parents because they were  _witnesses_?

Once she was on solid ground, the soldier dropped her again, with far less care than when he'd placed her on the boat. She stumbled, but kept her legs under her. Her body protested the movement, making her aware of the wounds on her head, chest and leg. Her shoulder was aching from being carried around like a rag doll. She balled her fists by her sides and eyed the men around her from under her fringe.

"Walk," said the man in snow camouflage, gesturing his gun at Maggie. He had a curved scar running under his left eye, in the shape of the letter 'u'.

Maggie shook her head, and started crying again when she saw anger flash in the man's eyes. "I don't want to," she rasped, her throat sore from the smoke and the crying. "I don't want to, I want my brother. My brother needs to come get me." Tears were slipping down her cheeks, and she hugged herself.

"Tony Stark is dead," said the man with the scar, sneering at her.

Maggie crumpled, falling forward on her knees and pressing her face into her ripped and bloody jeans. She stared at the hard concrete floor beneath her, eyes wide as tears continued to fall.  _You are the last_ , was the only clear thought in her head.

She dimly noticed that the man who had spoken was laughing, a rough bark that felt like blows raining down on her. Then there  _was_  a blow – a cold sting of metal on the back of her neck, which made her flinch and look up. The man with the scar had tapped her with the barrel of his rifle. Once he had her attention, he put the muzzle under her chin and lifted, so she had to rise to a kneel.

"Up," he said, his eyes hard. "And walk."

Shaking, Maggie got to her feet and followed the men as they went down one of the tunnels. She was tripping and stumbling on her twisted leg, but kept up.

She'd never understood the word  _heartbreak_ before, but she did now. Something her chest felt like it had been cracked open, left to bleed and wither. She pressed her hand to her chest as she stumbled after the soldiers, to check that her heart was still beating.

The soldier with the metal arm walked to her right, taking one step for every three of hers. He stared resolutely ahead, ignoring the looks she shot at him.  _This is his fault,_ Maggie thought, and her hands balled at her sides.  _He is my mission._

At the end of the corridor they turned right, and the man with the scar under his eye stepped up to a door with a picture of a skull with tentacles on it. Maggie recognized it from a Sunday morning cartoon about Captain America – the tentacled skull was the bad guys' logo. She furrowed her brow and watched the man type a passcode into a keypad beside the door.

The door swung open to reveal another large room, that looked a little bit like her dad's workshop. It was filled with machines and computers, though it was a lot tidier than the workshop at home. Maggie spotted things she recognized, like engines and weapons, and others she didn't, strange contraptions that she couldn't guess the purpose of. The room was also filled with more men, and a few women. About a third of the room wore the same snow camouflage as the soldiers around Maggie, another third wore green and grey camouflage in a different design, and the rest were in lab coats. Maggie noticed that the green uniformed men were in separate groups from the white.

Standing in the middle of the room, behind a table covered in computers and files, were two men without guns. One of them wore the green camouflage uniform, and a red hat. He had a patch on his left sleeve with the Russian flag on it. This man looked up at the metal-armed soldier first, then spotted the briefcase, and then Maggie. He scowled.

The other man wasn't in a uniform. He wore a nondescript black suit, with a black shirt and a black tie and everything. His white-blond hair was slicked back, and he scrutinised the new arrivals from under a heavy-set brow.

Maggie, the metal-armed soldier, and the rest of the men with guns came to a stop a few feet away from these two men. Maggie tried to make herself small. The soldier stepped forward and placed the briefcase on the table.

The man in the red hat – Maggie could now see that the hat had a gold star on it – opened the briefcase. Whatever was inside glowed blue, illuminating his face.

" _Otlichno, Soldat,"_  [ _"Well done, Soldier,"_ ] said the man in the red hat, nodding slightly despite the unhappy look on his face. Maggie didn't know he'd said, but she knew it was Russian.

There was a long, quiet moment after that. No one moved, save for the soldier, whose eyes flicked up to look straight at Maggie. She wanted to shrink under his empty gaze, but she straightened and glared right back at him. For the first time, a flicker of  _something_ went through his eyes – not anger or fear, but… it was gone before she could identify it.

Suddenly the man in the black suit spoke, in English: "Yes, the Soldier has done well. Sanders, remove the amount the Director promised us."

A pale, bald woman in a lab coat, who must have been Sanders, hastened to the briefcase and lifted out a bag of blue liquid. With a nod to the man in the black suit, she and a few more armed men left the room. Maggie noticed that the man in the red hat's scowl deepened. The man in the black suit must have noticed this too, because he smiled and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"Ah, Karpov, I do not understand why you glare. Your asset has done well, and you will have your Winter Soldiers, imitations that they are." He spoke with a faint Russian accent. "I know you are sceptical of my program, but it is the  _future._ "

The man in the red hat – Karpov – knocked the man's hand off his shoulder and said in rapid-fire Russian: " _Eto otkhody, chtoby ispol'zovat' yego u rebenka. Nash otryad - elita Rossii, i prestupleniye lishayet odno_ -" [" _It's a waste, to use it on a child. Our squad is the elite of Russia, and it is a crime to deprive one-_ "]

The man in the black suit was calm in the face of Karpov's clear anger. "Russia is falling apart. I have no nation now, only HYDRA, and you ought to feel the same. The Director told me to be sure when using this resource, and I am sure of this child. A Stark's mind, combined with HYDRA's might and the serum, will soon be the only weapon we need."

Despite her shock and exhaustion, Maggie had put together enough to know that she wanted no part in this. Russia? HYDRA? Whatever that blue fluid was?

Taking advantage of the distraction of the two men and the obvious effort of all the soldiers in the room to ignore the argument, Maggie turned on her heel and bolted for the door. She wasn't very hopeful about her chances, but it still stung when she only made it ten steps before one of the soldiers seized the back of her singed jacket and hurled her to the concrete floor.

Maggie let out an  _oof_ as she slammed into the floor, bruising her already sore shoulder, and then wailed as the soldier kicked her square in the back, sending her sprawling forward. With the breath knocked out of her, Maggie could only scrabble at the ground with her fingers, fighting for breath with tears streaming down her face.

"That's enough," called the man in the black suit. His voice was low, and calm.

Maggie sensed him move, stepping out from behind the table and striding toward her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw clean black loafers, like the kind her dad's business partners wore.

"Sit up."

She did. She knew there'd only be more pain if she refused. Now that he was closer, Maggie could see the calm, calculating light in the man's ice blue eyes, glinting under the shadow of his brow. It reminded her of Obie.

"Do you know why he did that?" the man asked, gesturing at the soldier who'd kicked her. Maggie's eyes flickered toward him, and then to the passive soldier with the metal arm, still standing beside the scowling Karpov.

"Because he's evil," Maggie spat, still curled on the floor. A sharp pain radiated from her lower back whenever she breathed, and she could feel dust clinging to her tearstained cheeks. The man who'd kicked her let out a huff of laughter, but the man in the black suit only made a  _hmm_ ing noise. He was standing right over her, so she had to crane her neck to look up at his face. He was staring down at her.

"Perhaps," he said, not even glancing away from her. "But regardless of his morality, he did it because it was  _easy_. It was easy for him to stop you and kick you. It was easy for them to drag you into this room. It was easy for us to kill your family. It was easy for us to take you. Because you are weak."

The words silenced Maggie like the kick had failed to.  _Weak_. She considered it. She'd never felt weak before, because she'd more or less been able to do what she wanted. But she hadn't been able to stop the crash. She hadn't been able to stop the soldier with the metal arm from killing her parents and taking her away. Maggie's eyes flickered back to the soldier. He was watching Maggie and the man in the black suit, but his eyes were just as cold and dead as they had been when he wrenched her away from the fire.

Maggie clenched her jaw and looked back up at the man in the black suit. He was still staring at her, peering into her eyes. He must have liked what he saw, because he smiled.

"You're weak now, but you don't have to be. I can make you strong." At this he crouched, bringing himself level with Maggie. He had symmetrical features, the sort her mom might have called handsome. She wasn't sure. The only thing she was sure of was that his eyes were sharp with intellect, like her father's eyes, but without any of the warmth. They definitely weren't like Tony's eyes; vibrant and dancing with excitement for his creations.

"I can make you stronger than him," the man said, tipping his chin at the man who'd kicked Maggie. She looked over her shoulder at him, and saw his sneer.

"I can make you stronger than everyone in this room," he continued, gesturing at all the soldiers and their guns. "I can even make you stronger than him." He nodded toward the soldier with the metal arm. Maggie looked at the soldier, taking in his enormous bulk, the glint of his arm, his cold eyes. Her scepticism must have shown on her face, because the man in the black suit let out a laugh. "Yes, even him. He's a relic of an old world, an old order." Maggie heard Karpov take a sharp breath through his nose, and didn't have to look at him to know he was glaring. The soldier did not react. "With your youth, your intelligence, your potential, I can make you a greater weapon than he ever was. You will be the strongest of HYDRA's weapons, their final solution. Do you want to be strong, child?"

Maggie looked down at her knees: bloody and covered in gravel, smearing the concrete as she knelt on the ground. She was so small next to these men. Weak, like he'd said. Her genius mind had already figured out that whatever happened if she said no would not be pleasant. She had no chance of escape. She was injured and helpless, closely watched by men much larger and with more guns than her. She supposed she could come up with some form of plan if she had enough time and materials, but… she  _wanted_ what this man was offering. She hated him, she hated this group of people, she hated the man who kicked her and the man in the red hat and especially the man who killed her parents.

To be stronger than all of them? It called to the anger that burned impotently in her chest. She could  _do something about it._ She looked up at the metal-armed soldier again, but this time she wasn't assessing his size. She glared at him, wishing she could burn a hole through his head with her glare. She saw him recognise her anger – he didn't react, but she saw that he had seen her fury, acknowledged it. It was bitterly satisfying. The flicker of  _something_ passed through his eyes again – something colder than fear or anger. Something like sadness. But once again, before she could identify it, his eyes deadened again, so you wouldn't think there was anything in his head but the mission. She wanted him to be her mission. She wanted to be able to carry it out.

"Well?" said the man in the black suit, standing up again. He didn't take a single step back, continuing to loom over her. "Do you want to be strong?"

Her parents were dead. Tony was dead. She was the last.

"Yes," Maggie bit out, wiping the tears and grime from her face. "I do."

The man in the black suit smiled, and without looking away from Maggie called: "You and your  _Soldat_ may go back to the wastes of Siberia now, Colonel Karpov. We have work to do here."

" _Mudak_ ," [" _Asshole_ ,"] spat Karpov, but within a minute had rallied his green-uniformed soldiers and marched out of the room with the briefcase. Maggie looked up as the soldier with the metal arm strode out after Karpov.  _Siberia_ , she thought.  _My mission is in Siberia._

The soldier with the metal arm didn't look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes: I chose to use our alphabet for the Russian, instead of Cyrillic, because that's what I usually prefer when reading fics - I tend to skip over long lines of Cyrillic, but if it's in our alphabet I sometimes try to sound it out in my head (and probably totally butcher the Russian language. Send my apologies to the Tsar). Also, the French will be explained.
> 
> I kind of imagine the MIT students during the BARF scene in Civil War looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes like 'wtf, why is Tony Stark airing his super personal emotional trauma to us rn?'
> 
> You can't imagine how stupid I felt while doing a whole bunch of research just so I could write a question for Maggie to ask – the Backward Euler method and spurious oscillations last chapter, and this chapter looking up programming languages from the early '90s… if anyone knows anything about math or programming, I would like to simultaneously ask you how I did, and apologize.
> 
> I have 12 chapters already written, to give myself a buffer to churn out chapters on time. This story will have an ending, though it might take a hiatus later on to wait for Infinity War Part 2.
> 
> Other than that: Thoughts? Feelings? Criticisms? Let me know!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no self-restraint, so it looks like I’ll be updating twice weekly from now on! I’ve got plenty of chapters ready and waiting, though, so I can sustain it. Enjoy!

December 19th, 1991  
HYDRA Facility, Québec

Maggie was strapped to a metal table in a room she’d never seen before. She hadn’t fought the scientists when they tightened thick leather cuffs around her arms and legs – she’d been still and quiet, telling herself _you’re going to be strong, you’re going to be strong, you’re going to be strong._

That was the mantra had that got her through the past few days of testing and scans. It felt like a horrible dream, being moved through underground tunnels in the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, being poked and prodded by men and women in lab coats who didn’t seem to care that half the time she was crying. The scientists and the soldiers seemed to know each other well, but didn’t talk much in front of her. When they did, it was a mix of English and a slightly different French than she was used to.

It was hard to not ask questions, but she'd already learned that she wouldn't be shrugged away or told to "bug off, Maggot," if she asked questions. She would be slapped and kicked, and told “silence!”

They’d been testing her mind and her body, getting her to run on a treadmill, to complete logic puzzles, to put machine parts together. Maggie didn’t know what they were testing for, but it had been mostly painless so far. Mostly: they had taken samples of her blood and bone marrow, the latter of which made her scream. She was still injured from the car crash, as well, with huge bruises across her front from the seat belt, a contusion on her forehead, and she had twisted or fractured something in her left leg. Her lower back ached where the man had kicked her.

The scientists seemed frustrated at these limitations, but the man in the black suit – who seemed to wear nothing else – was patient. He wasn’t there for all the testing, but was a consistent presence over the days. The scientists and soldiers only ever seemed to call him “sir” or “Project Leader.”

They had dressed Maggie in a grey t-shirt and shorts, and cut her hair so it was a shaggy mop around her ears. She had a room – it was windowless, but didn’t have any bars or locks, just a door. It had a thin mattress on a narrow metal frame, a toilet, and a sink with near-freezing water. She was permitted a fair amount of sleep and was able to wash herself in the sink.

She’d caught a glimpse of herself in a lab’s glass window a few hours ago. She didn’t let herself stare too long, because she knew the soldiers would make her stop, but she’d been startled by what she saw. She looked like a boy with her short hair; a gaunt, bruised boy with dark eyes and paper-thin limbs. She didn’t think she could ever be strong.

The day before, her programming skills were tested in the room with the computers and machines. After making notes and muttering to each other, the scientists ushered her out again without telling her what they thought. But not before she’d noticed a desk in the room covered with pictures of _her_. She recognised newspaper clippings, a photo of her first circuit board and some of her more recent models, her latest test scores from school, and lots of pictures. The photos looked like they’d been taken by someone following her around: she saw herself and her nannies walking to and from the mansion, lunch with her mom, visiting the L.A. headquarters. There were stacks of files on the desk, and though Maggie itched to read them she knew she’d never be allowed. She didn’t think the scientists had meant to let her see that desk, or they just didn’t care.

She had also heard the scientists talking about the “previous subjects”. She didn’t know how many there had been, but she gathered that they were also children, and that they’d all died. Maggie wondered if the girl who had taken her place in her family’s car was a previous subject.

Mostly she had been shuffled around by the soldiers, in a constant state of shock. She hadn’t seen the sun since the soldier with the metal arm brought her into this place, and she was haunted by waking and sleeping nightmares of her parents and Tony consumed by flames.

She didn’t bother trying to resist the soldiers and scientists, knowing that she was powerless to prevent them from doing what they liked. She was barely able to summon enough energy to complete their tests. She felt utterly drained.

Besides, the Project Leader had promised she would be stronger than all of them. She could wait until then.

But today, after a final ECG scan, the woman scientist Sanders, who was bald as an egg and had an upturned nose, had called in the Project Leader and reported that: “The subject has tested above expectations. We can proceed.”

So now she was strapped to the metal table, watching Sanders and the rest of the scientists bring in the bag of blue fluid. Maggie’s heart was pounding. That fluid had been in her dad’s briefcase, so it couldn’t be too bad, could it?

Her skin was vibrating by the time they hooked her up to various vital monitors and hung the blue bag on an IV stand. There were only about three scientists working on her, but the rest stood around the room watching. The Project Leader was sat on a stool by the door, his ice-blue eyes assessing the proceedings.

Sanders had the IV line in her gloved hand, and looked toward the Project Leader. He nodded.

Sanders didn’t give Maggie any warning – she pushed the needle into the vein in the crook of her elbow, holding it steady and securing the line to her arm with medical tape. Maggie clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. She’d never liked needles, and all the jabbing and sample-taking over the past few days hadn’t made her any less nervous about this one. In fact, it had probably made the fear worse.

Sanders started the transfusion. Maggie could feel the blue liquid entering her body: it felt cold, travelling up her arm and into her chest, then throughout her body, but it didn’t hurt. She couldn’t feel the needle any more, so she relaxed against the table.

Then it started to burn. It started as an itch where the needle pressed into her skin, which suddenly flared into what felt like a line of fire burning up her arm. Maggie’s eyes snapped open and she gasped, choking on the pain that blossomed in her chest. Within seconds her body felt like it was on fire, being scorched from the inside out. Maggie screamed, bucking against the restraints, trying to escape from the fluid that was already inside her.

“Take it out!” she screamed, looking wildly around for Sanders – the woman had backed away and was holding a clipboard, staring back at her. “Take it out, please!”

No one moved. Maggie clenched her fists and thrashed her legs, shrieking as pain razed through her body, lighting up every cell. She threw her head back, mouth open in a silent scream because she’d run out of breath. She just had the wherewithal to wonder if this was what death felt like, before the pain surged into her head and she lost all sense.

After what could have been hours or only seconds, Maggie came back to herself. The pain was gone, but the memory of it tingled along her skin and echoed like a ghoul in her mind.

“She doesn’t look very different,” she heard a voice say.

“The serum’s never been tested on children before. It’s possible it will interact with the subject’s growth. Either way, it’s clearly impacted her strength.”

Maggie opened her eyes and found herself looking not at the layered granite of the roof, but the dusty concrete of the lab floor. She could see and feel her palms pressed against the floor, holding her up. Her arms were shaking, but she didn’t feel like they were about to give out – they felt _strong_ , as if she could support her entire weight with just one arm. She leaned back so she was kneeling on the floor, and looked around. The scientists were staring at her and frantically scribbling notes, whispering to one another. Over her shoulder, she could see the metal bed she’d been strapped to. The leather cuffs were torn, dangling from the edges of the metal frame. The IV bag was empty.

Maggie registered a faint beeping and realised that her heart rate monitor was still attached. With shaking fingers, she peeled it off her chest, focusing on the steady flow of breath in and out of her lungs. _What happened?_

She turned her head so she could see the Project Leader. He was on his feet, his ice-blue eyes just as calm and calculating as ever while he stared at her, but now with a glint of something like excitement. After holding her gaze for a moment, he nodded to Sanders.

“We can run the physical trials later. Get her to the machine.”

Hands under her arms pulled Maggie to her feet, and then she was being led out of the lab. Her senses were screaming at her – her footsteps sounded louder in her ears, she was acutely aware of the brush of her sweaty clothes against her skin, and she was picking out details in the concrete floor that she never would have noticed before. There were two soldiers on either side of her, but she could hear more of them marching behind her, with the scientists and the Project Leader. As they walked, Maggie realised that she didn’t hurt any more. Her left leg didn’t twinge at every step, her back didn’t ache, she couldn’t see any bruises on her arms or knuckles. _I’m strong now_ , she realised, and then simultaneously realised that she didn’t know what to do about it. She just needed a minute to sit still, to test her new limits, to consider her plan.

Whatever the blue liquid had done to her, her hearing had clearly improved – she could hear the Project Leader’s low voice as he spoke to Sanders behind her. She ducked her head and focused, trying not to show how interested she was.

“I need you to be precise, Sanders. I don’t want you to wipe it all – we need core skills and relevant information to remain. The subject’s reasoning and cognitive function need to be the same, if not better-”

“I’m aware, sir, and we’re fully capable of doing that.” Sanders had a clipped French accent. “For years the machine has left the Soldier’s strategic and combat skills fully intact, as well as his language recall and operational thinking. The machine targets memory centres and behavioural functions in the temporal and frontal lobes.”

“I want her to be able to learn. To think, and reason, and outwit our enemies. This subject _cannot_ become a drooling mess like the others.”

“With all due respect, Project Leader, the others didn’t have the serum or the… mental fortitude that this subject has tested with. The procedure will successfully remove long term memories.”

There was a long pause. Maggie parsed the conversation and began to panic. She didn’t know _how_ what they said was going to happen would happen, but it sounded like all her reasons for getting strong were about to be taken away from her. She wouldn’t remember her family, or her hatred for the men around her, or her mission. She clutched the hem of her t-shirt. Her mind raced, trying to figure out how to get out of this.

Finally, as they turned down another corridor with a curved, rocky roof, the Project Leader spoke again. “I need her to be better than the Soldier, Sanders. Smarter, faster, stronger.”

“Those will come down to training, sir, and the other enhancements. The machine won’t impact those. Her intellect will remain intact.”

“It better. We’ve never had a subject like her. If Karpov had only had the insight in the seventies to get a hold of the other mind like hers… well. Your men have already prepped the machine?”

“Yes, sir, they’re waiting for us.”

They came to another door, and the soldier to Maggie’s left put in the code. It was the room she’d been taken to on the first day, and Maggie could see that the space had been cleared around one of the machines she didn’t recognise: a chair with two blocky metal arms rising above it, surrounded by wiring and computers.

The soldiers flanking Maggie walked into the room, but she stopped in the doorway. She sensed the soldiers behind her shuffle their weapons, and felt the Project Leader’s gaze on the back of her neck.

“In,” said a man’s voice behind her, and she felt the muzzle of a gun prod at her back. It didn’t make her stumble.

Maggie’s mind was racing, trying to figure out her next move. She’d done everything she’d been told to do for the past two and a half days. Did she have another option, now?

A hand on her shoulder made her turn, and she found herself looking into the ice-blue eyes of the Project Leader.

“Sir,” she croaked out, her eyes darting. “You don’t need to do this.”

He cocked his head. “Oh?”

“The machine, sir. I don’t need it. I already said yes.”

“Ah.” The Project Leader looked over his shoulder and shared a glance with Sanders. The woman’s gaze was hard. “The machine isn’t to punish you, child,” he went on. “It’s to make you stronger. You told me you wanted that.”

Maggie hesitated. “I… am already getting stronger.”

“Yes, but your strength will not be only in your flesh. It will be in your mind. I need you to be ruthless, calculating. Without sentiment or attachment, except for loyalty to the project. This machine will strip away your weakness.”

At that, the hand on Maggie’s shoulder turned her around and propelled her into the room. Her mind was reeling – was this what she’d said yes to? Was it her memories of her family and her life before that made her weak?

As she was directed to sit in the chair, she thought about whatever strength the blue liquid had given her. What was it for, if she couldn’t remember what she needed to use it for? What was the point of being strong, with no mission?

She thought about the soldier with the metal arm and his mission. He had been in this machine, she’d heard Sanders talk about him. The machine must have taken away his memories, taken away his missions. So why had he come for her?

Restraints on the chair clamped around her arms and legs.

“No,” Maggie mumbled, dragged out of her thoughts. Feeling raw and numb, she pulled against the restraints, wanting them to break like the leather cuffs. But they held, holding her against the cold metal of the chair. “No, don’t…”

One of the scientists held a rubber bit to her mouth. Maggie shook her head, eyes wild. The scientist shrugged then jabbed his fingers into the muscles of her jaw, forcing her mouth open, and shoved the rubber in. It tasted like metal.

She was once again hooked up to various monitors, while the Project Leader watched.

Maggie’s chest was heaving, and she realised that tears were streaming from the corners of her eyes.

 _Please,_ she wanted to say. _Please, this isn’t what I wanted._

Her genius brain had caught up with the program now, but too late for her to use her new strength. She was furious with herself for not realising sooner – what was the point of being a genius if she could be fooled in such a way?

Because she knew now: the Project Leader was going to make her strong, but the strength wasn’t for her at all. It was for them, for their missions. Any mission Maggie wanted to carry out, anything that was _her,_ was about to be washed away.

“Commencing initial procedure of the subject,” Sanders said from somewhere behind her, her voice clinical. The metal arms whirred into life and began to descend toward Maggie’s face. She could see two plates sparking with electricity.

Biting into the rubber in her mouth, Maggie began screaming again. She pulled at the restraints, yanking and shoving, but was rewarded only with a slight groan of the metal. The anger that had burned uselessly in her chest for the past days flared, fuelling her limbs.

Then the plates connected with her face, and all thoughts were gone.

* * *

 When the screaming echoed away and the chair powered down, the Project Leader stood in front of his subject, jaw clenched and his foot tapping in an uncharacteristic display of nerves.

When the subject’s eyes opened and focused blearily on him, he spoke.

“Identify yourself.”

“I… I am…” the subject’s young, high voice was tremulous, and her dark eyes were wet with tears. The Project Leader clenched a fist behind his back: clearly in addition to programming the subject with the obedience trigger words, behavioural training would have to be a focus.

“I don’t know,” the subject finished, eyes darting back and forth in confusion.

“What is four hundred and fifty six multiplied by three hundred and twenty five?”

“One hundred and forty eight thousand, two hundred.”

“We will comprehensively test the subject’s cognitive and physical functions momentarily,” Sanders told the Project Leader with a bite of annoyance in her voice.

“Excellent,” the Project Leader said. “We’ll proceed as planned with the testing and move straight onto cognitive reconditioning to ensure obedience.” He stepped toward the subject. She was still showing symptoms of fear – she was trembling, and her vitals showed an elevated heartrate. Once the trigger words came into effect, he would be able to control the subject immediately after the wipe. For now, he would have to deal with the fear and confusion. He made sure she was watching him, then began to speak.

“You are the Wyvern,” he told the subject, and watched her eyes as she took in the information. “You are an asset of HYDRA. We are going to shape you into the perfect weapon.” He turned from the subject to Sanders. “Next time, I’ll need her to retain that information, as well as any training in combat, obedience and espionage we give her.

“It will remain intact,” Sanders said, not looking up from her notes.

“Excellent.” He turned back, taking in the skinny limbs and wild hair of the subject. His lip curled. The subject had a lot of growing to do, but the serum would help with that. “Now, identify yourself.”

“Wyvern,” the subject croaked out, and settled back in the chair. Her eyes were blank.

* * *

December 22nd, 1991  
Woodlawn Cemetery, New York

James Rhodes had been to a few funerals in his twenty-three years, but he’d never been to one with as many guests as Howard, Maria and Maggie’s funeral. People kept calling it the Stark Funeral, as if Tony wasn’t standing right there at the head of the procession, watching his family’s coffins sink into the ground.

Rhodes sat beside his friend through the ceremony, not sure whether to touch him or even look at him. Tony didn’t move a muscle. Rhodes wasn’t even sure if he heard anything the funeral celebrant was saying. He didn’t react to the various family friends and co-workers that gave short eulogies about Maria and Howard. He didn’t even blink when the butler, who looked ashen and shattered, got up to speak. The butler cried as he told the mourners what an honour it had been to work with Mr Stark. Rhodes barely heard what he said about Maggie, it was so choked with tears. The butler was guided away by his equally shattered wife, both looking frail and weary as they returned to their seats.

Tony just sat with his hands in his pockets, his face gaunt, staring at the graves.

The gravestones were simple, which surprised Rhodes for some reason. The funeral arrangements had been handled by the Stark lawyers and the nosy butler, and he supposed they didn’t want to make a pageant out of it. Maggie’s grave was smaller than her parents’, and the inscription simply read:

 _Margaret Abigail Stark  
_ _June 2 nd 1986 – December 16th 1991._

Rhodes knew that Tony had somehow got a hold of the morgue reports. He’d found the file on the workshop bench when he came to pull Tony out of his drunken stupor two days ago. Rhodes had tried not to look, but it was lying open on a page with details about how the metal of the car had melted and fused to Maggie’s bones. After heaving Tony into his bed, Rhodes had left the room and thrown up in a garbage can.

Suddenly the celebrant said, in his appropriately low, soothing voice: “And that brings an end to the proceedings. If you would like to stand by the graves and lay flowers and other gifts, or if you would like to say a word or two, please do so now.”

Tony must have been listening, because at that he shot to his feet and strode back down the rows of seats, hands still in his pockets. Startled, Rhodes jumped up to follow him, but was stopped by an elderly hand on the sleeve of his uniform. He turned to see the weathered face of Peggy Carter, who he vaguely recognised from her occasional visits with Tony. Rhodes was struck by the pain in her eyes.

“We need to look out for him,” she said, her accented voice choked with tears. She searched his face. “He’ll make it difficult for us, but we must do it anyway.”

Rhodes had barely met the woman, but he had never wanted to carry out another person’s orders more than he did in that moment.

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded to her, and then turned to catch up with his friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoy writing Tony, he’s a fun and complex character. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of room for him in the coming chapters, but have no fear! He’ll be back sooner than you think.
> 
> Also: yes, about half the base speaks French because they’re in French Canada – the Winter Soldier didn’t magically drive all the way to Paris. For the record I think Canada is a wonderful place to visit and live, not just a handy place to have a remote evil lair.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely reviews! Content warning for brainwashing & experimentation.

_March 22nd, 1992  
_ _From: Wyvern Project Leader  
_ _To: Director  
_ _Wyvern Project: Progress Report_

_Cognitive recalibration of the Wyvern has gone very well. Relying on findings of previous projects, such as Zola's work on the Winter Soldier, Chief Scientist Sanders' team has had great success with mental reconditioning and the memory suppression machine. Identity destruction, repetition tactics and continuous cycles with the machine have ensured that obedience trigger words are buried deeply in the Wyvern's psyche._

_Final stages of reconditioning included presenting the subject with two "innocent" targets, providing the subject with a weapon and telling it to kill one of the targets. Subject initially questioned the order. This resulted in elimination of both targets, and 95 milliamps of electrical current were run through the subject's body. The subject was then wiped. This stage of reconditioning was repeated, with new targets each time, until the subject consistently obeyed orders in conjunction with the trigger words, with no questioning or distress._

_Sanders and her team have asked me to particularly highlight this stage, as it seems to have had the best results in cognitively recalibrating the subject, and may prove useful in later projects._

_Cognitive recalibration of the Wyvern has been deemed complete, and we will be moving on to training and enhancements. As predicted, the resource enhanced the subject's strength, speed, endurance and healing exponentially, and continues to interact with the subject's natural biological growth. We have already begun initial combat and weapons training with the base's current operatives, but I formally request further specialists to be posted on a nonpermanent basis, to ensure a rounded instruction in combat, intelligence, behavioural and technology skills._

_Hail HYDRA._

_March 23rd, 1992  
_ _From: Director  
_ _To: Wyvern Project Leader  
_ _Re: Wyvern Project: Progress Report_

_I am pleased to hear about the ongoing success of the Project. I was right to put my faith in you and your confidence in the Project._

_I do, however, remain sceptical about the ability of such a young subject to learn and retain advanced skills. I will grant your request for HYDRA operatives with certain specialisations to be posted to your base, but will start with only one or two. The posting of further operatives will depend on initial reports._

_Hail HYDRA._

 

* * *

 

March, 1992 ( _5 Years Old_ )  
HYDRA Facility, Québec

The Wyvern had been wiped enough by now to know what had just happened to her. Chest heaving, arms pulling futilely at the machine's restraints, she closed her eyes as the bald scientist recited the words:

" _Verre, transmission, affamé, sept, vieux, sécurité, trois, tunnel, digne, quatre-vingts._ " [" _Glass, transmission, starving, seven, old, safety, three, tunnel, worthy, eighty_."]

At the last word, the Wyvern opened her eyes.

"Wyvern," greeted the bald scientist.

"Ready to comply." Her voice was still high and young, but her tone was impassive.

The scientist smiled: a hard, sharp thing. "Report to the training room."

Once she was released from the restraints, the Wyvern got to her feet and walked from the lab, her steps even and her eyes blank. The Wyvern felt confused, as she always did after being in the chair, but she had her orders.

She still drew stares from the soldiers in the base when she walked, alone, through its fluorescently-lit corridors. The Wyvern suspected it was because of her small stature, or her even gait and fixed gaze. Her initial training had taught her how to hold herself: she was a weapon, and weapons did not blink, or cower, or feel. Anything she felt was discarded. The only things that mattered were the words, and her mission.

The Wyvern typed in the passcode to the training room – she did not know when she had learned it, only that she did know it – and walked in. The Project Leader stood on the thin mat in the centre of the room, speaking with two large, muscled men and a wiry-looking woman.

"Ah, here she is," said the Project Leader. His black suit was neatly pressed, and his hands were folded in front of him. "Approach, Wyvern."

She obeyed and saw the strangers' eyes widen. She knew what they saw: a blank-faced young girl who stood a third of their size, wearing simple grey training clothes.

"You want us to train… her?" said one of the men, who wore a green military uniform and a slouch hat. His accent was British.

"You've been briefed on the project," the Project Leader said, eyes sharp. "This is the project. Teach her everything you know."

The Wyvern kept her hands by her sides and watched them silently.

The second man looked equally sceptical. He was wearing sweatpants and a skin-tight underarmour shirt in place of a uniform. "I don't know about you two, but I prepared a training regime that requires certain physical attributes…" His accent was similar to the Project Leader's; distinctly Slavic.

As if he had been waiting for that, the Project Leader smiled. "Wyvern, subdue Agent Kuznetsov."

The Wyvern had been trained to use her intelligence, so she deduced that the man with the Slavic accent was Agent Kuznetsov. Soundlessly, she sprang from the floor and drove her whole mass into the centre of his chest. He slammed to the ground on his back, letting out a grunt of surprise, and the Wyvern slithered off him to seize his arm and try to force it under his back. She'd been taught that move… sometime. By someone. But the agent was clearly a well-trained man. He got over his shock and leaned into the move, flipping to his knees and positioning himself behind her. He grabbed both her wrists and tried to pull them behind her back, but the Wyvern strained against him, using her strength to resist the hold. She heard the man in the uniform and the woman gasp. The Wyvern turned on her opponent and landed a punch to the centre of his chest, knocking him back onto the mat. She didn't use all her strength, as she knew – somehow – that such a punch would break his ribs.

"That's enough," the Project Leader said. Instantly, the Wyvern got to her feet and stood at parade rest, eyes blank.

The agent got to his feet, a hand pressed to his sternum. Pain and shock flickered across his face.

"As you can see," the Project Leader said, levelling each of his guests with a long look, "she has strength and speed, but requires the training to back it up. Understood?"

He got three silent nods.

"Wonderful. Agent Kuznetsov, perhaps you'd like to begin?"

 

* * *

 

Kuznetsov was a former KGB agent. Once he got over the age and size of his trainee, he put the Wyvern through a brutal physical fitness regime that taught her the limits of her strength and how to use it. He and the woman, a Mossad operative in deep cover for HYDRA, trained her in intelligence and espionage.

They showed her how to analyse data and crack codes, and found that she took to it remarkably well – it seemed they only had to suggest the principle of something before she had mastered it. They had her follow certain soldiers or scientists around the base without being noticed. The woman convinced the Project Leader to take the Wyvern outside of the base for the first time, to test her covert surveillance skills in the forest. They taught her to lie. They built up her hand-to-hand combat skills, finding that the Wyvern fought like a small, speedy fighter  _and_  like a heavy-hitter. They didn't have to build up her physical strength, so they were teaching her how to use it.

Her enhanced body took to the training well, and whatever her body couldn't handle, her mind surely could. The third stranger was a Sergeant Major in the SAS, who surveilled a great deal of the British Armed Forces for HYDRA. He was a weapons specialist, and introduced the Wyvern to entire catalogues of guns, knives and explosives. He found that she was already familiar with the names and mechanics of many weapons, though she did not know how to use them. He set about remedying that, as well as teaching her about chemical and biological warfare methods that he hadn't learned from the SAS.

These teachers stayed with her for months. They soon realised that though her dark eyes were blank, she heard – and processed – every word they told her. She was by no means a photographic learner, as she had to repeat moves and techniques a few times before she got it, but she was still much faster than any of them had expected. She used her strength to devastating effect, and her mind even more so.

Not even Sanders and her team were sure if it was the serum or the subject's mind that allowed her to progress so quickly.

Of course, sometimes the Wyvern's teachers witnessed cracks in her façade. Once or twice, after long training sessions or a seemingly random comment, her blankness fell away and she started crying and cringed away from her teacher. They knew to alert one of the scientists when this happened, and the Wyvern would be taken away for reconditioning.

Sometimes the Wyvern was unavailable for training. The Project Leader would give no explanations, but when she returned she had wounds along her back and shoulders. Her teachers did not make their training any gentler, and were impressed that though the Wyvern appeared to feel her bruises and cuts, she did not cry out. The Mossad agent incorporated this skill into her training on resisting torture.

 

* * *

 

The time came for the three HYDRA operatives to leave. They had covers to hold up, though they all wanted to witness the ongoing improvement of the Wyvern. They had seen the Project Leader's vision, and knew that if the project was successful, it would be one of HYDRA's most formidable weapons.

The Project Leader saw them off with a single nod of the head, not taking his eyes off them until their helicopter vanished into the horizon.

"Well, Wyvern," he said, once he'd returned to the shooting range to find her hurling knives into a foam target. Her aim was one of her weak areas: it couldn't be fixed through sheer force or through intellect. That being said, every one of these knives had hit the target. The Project Leader folded his hands in front of him as he watched the small Wyvern wait for him to speak. "We'll soon see if you've earned yourself the right to more teachers."

"Yes, sir."

 

* * *

 

 _July 2nd, 1992  
_ _From: Director  
_ _To: Wyvern Project Leader  
_ _You'll have the resources you need.  
_ _Hail Hydra._

 

* * *

 

For the next three years the Wyvern was trained by an ongoing cycle of HYDRA's greatest minds and soldiers. The Québec base's proximity to the US made it a strategic position for other HYDRA projects and missions, so the Wyvern was often not the only reason an operative would be posted there.

The Wyvern received combat, intelligence, espionage and weapons training from operatives the world over. She benefited from the knowledge of the KGB, Mossad, CIA, MI6, the SAS, the Israeli Sayerat Matkal, the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, Pakistan's SSG, and many more. HYDRA had operatives in most major organisations around the world, so the Project Leader had his pick of the bunch.

The Wyvern was especially good at programming, hacking, engineering, and other technological training. It was this proclivity that gave Chief Scientist Sanders the idea that the Wyvern's mind might hold the clue to achieving a long-unrealised dream of the Wyvern Project.

 

* * *

 

July, 1992 ( _6 Years Old_ )  
HYDRA Facility, Québec

"Marino, I am starting to question your ongoing usefulness."

"Sir, you brought me here for my kn-knowledge of the Adamantium formula, and I have  _consistently_  delivered."

"If you call accidentally deforming and terminating the previous subjects 'delivering,'" the Project Leader said in an icy voice.

Marino, a weedy scientist with enormous glasses, cringed. "What you're asking for… it may be possible, but I'm not sure I have the resources to-"

"Resources?" the Project Leader didn't raise his voice, but Marino shrank all the same. "This project is one of the most favoured heads of HYDRA. What resources have I not given you?"

Marino shifted in his chair. The other scientists were studiously ignoring his plight.

"I require assistance – someone to help me run simulations, someone who can help me to program the molecular arrangement."

The Project Leader folded his hands together, a sure sign that he was restraining his temper. "Marino. The Wyvern Project is not going to be a cheap imitation of the Winter Soldier Project. We need this subject to be  _better_ , not just in mind and training, but in her enhancements-"

Sanders, who had until now been reviewing her notes on the subject's cognitive recalibration, looked up. "Use the Wyvern," she interrupted, not flinching when the Project Leader turned his gaze on her. He respected that about her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Wyvern, sir. She's shown an aptitude for science. She could help Marino."

The Project Leader stepped back from Marino, who sank into his chair in relief. "Are you certain, Sanders? She is still very young."

"Her advanced intelligence was clear in the surveillance, and in her ongoing testing. Baghavi taught her to make sarin gas in a matter of days. She improved on his formula."

"Would having a hand in the design cause her to resist?"

Sanders' cheek twitched, a tell that the Project Leader knew to mean she was irritated with him. "No, sir. The trigger words are now fully integrated, so we can ensure obedience at all times. And we can wipe her before the procedure, just in case."

The Project Leader leaned against the wall, running a hand over his jaw. Marino tried to make himself small behind his computer.

Eventually, the Project Leader pursed his lips and nodded to Sanders. "You're right. The Wyvern's mind is a source of great potential. Such a mind should surely have a role in creating the greatest weapon of our time."

 

* * *

 

September, 1992 ( _6 Years Old_ )  
HYDRA Facility, Québec

The Wyvern knew the feel of the sedative. It immobilised her limbs, clouded her mind; a familiar weight. Of course, she couldn't recall ever having been sedated before, but it was familiar all the same. As were the metal restraints around her limbs.

Her orders were to  _lie still_  and  _don't make a sound._ Easy enough to follow, especially with the sedative and the restraints. She was lying on her front, her face poked through a hole in the metal table. Before she'd got on the table, she'd seen beakers and tubes filled with a molten, silvery-grey metal on the laboratory desk. The metal had set off a tingle of recognition, but she had her orders to follow.

Lying on the table, she could hear the scientific equipment bubbling and beeping and whirring. Outside the room, her enhanced hearing picked up a conversation between the Project Leader, Sanders, and a scientist whose voice sounded familiar, but she couldn't place.

"-truly remarkable," the voice was saying. "I'd been close to achieving this particular molecular rearrangement, but to integrate it with the existing serum in the blood-"

"Yes, Marino, we've heard," said Sanders. "Now hurry up, we'll already be burning through our stock of sedatives to keep the subject still as it is. Are you ready for the procedure?"

"Yes, ma'am."

They entered the room and went through preparations. The Wyvern's bare back was sprayed with cold antiseptic, and she heard the  _snap_ of latex gloves. She remembered this – not specifically, but she knew this had happened before. There was no bubbling metal before, though. She felt a warm, latex covered hand press against the back of her head.

"Commencing procedure." Marino's voice was shaky, and his thumb swiped back and forth across her scalp.

A scalpel pressed against the Wyvern's neck, and she disobeyed orders. She screamed.

By the end of the procedure, the Wyvern had more than a passing sense of familiarity. She remembered how she and the scientist – Marino – had rearranged the molecular structure of the metal on the computer simulation, and watched it fuse to the bone. She remembered holding a sample of bone – her bone – in a pair of tweezers and painting it with the metal. She remembered the look of wonder on Marino's face when she told him her theory about the serum.

She'd even realised that the procedure they were hypothesising about was for her. She'd still done it. She'd still given them the answers.

The Wyvern knew what had been done to her, but feeling it was another matter entirely. The metal she had helped to formulate felt like shards of ice piercing her bones in one moment, and in the next felt like the scorching lick of flames. She shuddered on the cold metal tabletop as Marino and Sanders glued her skin back together. The sedative was wearing off, bringing a sharper bite to the pain, and she realised that she could move again.

But she had her orders. The Wyvern clenched her teeth and screwed her eyes shut. She breathed through her nose, because she'd screamed her throat raw.

Finally there were no more hands on her. She let out a shuddering breath, and couldn't help the whimper that escaped her mouth as her ribs heaved with the movement. The restraints hissed open.

"Stand."

The Wyvern's eyes shot open at the Project Leader's command. Her body wanted to resist, but she knew, deep in her psyche, that she had to obey.  _You are a weapon. Weapons do not feel._

With a groan keening between her teeth, the Wyvern managed to slide her legs off the table, and onto the floor. She followed them with her hips, then her chest, and then, with a monumental effort, settled her weight on her feet. Her body was ablaze with pain, and she was sure it was showing on her face, but she was standing. Throbbing bolts of ice and fire shot from her heels to the base of her neck.

The Project Leader watched her with his ever-calculating eyes.

"Marino," he said, eyes still on the Wyvern. "Report."

"It… It appears to be working, sir. The subject is mobile, with no signs of deformity. I will have to continue conducting tests to make sure the Adamantium grows with the bones, as the simulations predicted, but… the fusion appears to be successful."

"Scan her," Sanders said, unimpressed.

The Wyvern remained on her feet as the scientists scanned her. She knew that her healing was enhanced, but a procedure such as this would take time. She tried to reconcile herself to spending days, weeks, with this stabbing pain radiating through half of her body.

The scans that finally came back were just like the images the Wyvern had seen in dozens of simulations. The silvery-grey Adamantium coated the bones of her spine, her shoulders, the back of her ribcage, her hips, and trailed down the backs of her legs. Like scaffolding. The Wyvern knew what the result would be: she would be even stronger, able to support greater weights, withstand harder blows to her back. And she knew that what had been done today wouldn't be the end.

"Congratulations, Marino," said the Project Leader. He was looking at the scans with something like wonder. " _This_ is the future of the Wyvern Project. This is what I promised HYDRA when I joined its ranks. This… this is the first strike at a sword that will be forged a hundred times over, to get the strongest mettle. You've done well."

"Thank you, sir," Marino's voice was hushed. The scientist's eyes were on the Wyvern, wide and bright.

"Wyvern." The Project Leader looked across the lab at his weapon, which was still shaking. "Do you feel stronger?"

The Wyvern rolled her shoulders. Beneath the pain, which was making her vision spotty, she could feel it – a spine stronger than iron, stronger than steel. A spine that could support enormous weight. That was what was keeping her upright. The metal in her body was sturdy enough to keep her standing tall when she felt torn to shreds.

"Yes, sir."

 

* * *

 

January, 1994 ( _7 Years Old_ )  
The Red Room, Russia

" _My gordimsya tem, chto prinimayem vas, General'naya Petrov._ " [" _We are honored to host you, General Petrov_."]

The Wyvern had been instructed to shadow the Project Leader and observe. Her observation of Madame B. was that the woman shared the Project Leader's calm calculation when it came to assets. She also sensed that the woman's polite words and sharp, insincere smile were intended to insult her guest.

"Madame," the Project Leader said, smiling. "We thank you for having us, and it's a pleasure to see you again. I have brought several prominent operatives and scientists who I am sure will benefit your pupils. I'm sure we will be of great use to each other."

Madame B.'s wrinkled face hardened. "We have never trained a girl who was not one of our own pupils." She curled her lip, glancing over her shoulder at the Wyvern. The Wyvern did not look away. "And she is too young to be of any use yet."

"Well, the Wyvern has weaknesses that require… correction outside of our facility."

The Wyvern knew this. She had been growing ever more proficient in combat, languages, and technologies, but she had little to no experience when it came to infiltration and espionage. She could shadow a target through a base or a forest without being spotted, but when it came to engaging with a target, ingratiating herself, she had no leg to stand on. She was a blunt weapon with a brilliant mind. Her teachers had only got her so far, and the Project Leader had decided she needed… fellow students.

"We will teach her," Madame B. said. "But if she fails, it is not necessary for her to live."

The Project Leader merely smiled again. "Madame, where would you like to begin?"

" _Nachat'_." [" _Begin._ "]

The other girl rushed at the Wyvern, eager to prove herself against the newcomer.

The Wyvern had learned the fallacies of ego. She absorbed a few clumsy, powerful blows, then seized the other girl's wrist, yanked her to the ground and dislocated her shoulder. The girl, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, howled.

The Wyvern placed her foot on the girl's back and looked over her shoulder at Madame B. and the Project Leader. The Project Leader was suppressing a smile, but Madame B.'s face was stone. The girls standing in a ring around the fighters were too well-trained to speak, but the Wyvern could see them glancing at each-other, eyes wide.

"Zoya," Madame B. called. As the blonde girl was pulled to her feet and dragged from the courtyard, an older girl stepped up. She looked to be about seventeen, almost twice the age of the Wyvern, with black hair pulled behind her head in a severe braid. Her eyes were shrewder than the last girl's.

When Madame B. gave the order to begin, neither of them moved. They eyeballed each other; measuring, calculating.

" _Nachat_ '," Madame B. repeated, a bite of anger in her voice. The girl and the Wyvern stepped together simultaneously.

This girl was  _good._ The Wyvern recognised elements of martial arts in her style, but the girl changed from form to form so smoothly that the Wyvern couldn't pick out a particular kind. Her punches were driven, well-aimed, and she was quick enough to duck and weave in time with the Wyvern. The girl hissed when she kicked the Wyvern's lower back and felt the hard bite of metal. She recovered, though, spinning away from the Wyvern's grasp.

But the Wyvern was better. After a few minutes of interchanged blows and circling one another, the Wyvern sidestepped the girl's axe kick, ducked under a right cross, and slammed her fist into the girl's throat at full power.

 _Kill one of them,_ the Project Leader had murmured to the Wyvern when they stepped into the courtyard.

Watching the black-haired girl clutch at her crushed throat, eyes bulging, the Wyvern felt the completion of her order settle in her gut. She didn't look away until the girl had stopped convulsing.

The girls in the courtyard had taken a step back, leaving the Wyvern alone in empty space. She turned to face Madame B. and the Project Leader again. There was a ringing silence in the yard.

"This is not one of her weaknesses, Madame," said the Project Leader, his eyes fixed on his project.

Madame B.'s face was white. " _Vernites' na svoi koyki_ ," [" _Return to your bunks,_ "] she managed to spit out, and the girls were gone in an instant, shooting each other sideways looks.

The Wyvern faced Madame B.'s stare with a steady gaze. The black-haired girl's corpse was crumpled at her feet.

After a long moment, the woman's lips parted. " _Ona chudovishche_ ," [" _She is a monster,_ "] she breathed.

"Yes," replied the Project Leader, dusting off his black suit. "Help me to make her better."

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern and the senior members of the Wyvern Program remained at the Red Room for almost two years. She never killed another pupil – clearly the first demonstration had been enough. Instead, when she was trained in combat, the girls went up against her in twos and threes, which challenged her mind and body. She mastered more languages – as well as English, Russian and French she became fluent in Chinese, Arabic and Spanish.

The girls hated her. They hated each other, of course, but their hate for her was a unifying thing. Though they sometimes subdued her in combat in groups, she would always beat them at the logic puzzles, codes and hacking.

Four times the girls tried to kill the Wyvern, and only got close the last time: they converged on her bed while she slept and tried to slip a knife into her heart. That night the Wyvern learned a valuable lesson about vigilance, even in her sleep. The girls learned how long it took for their bones to knit themselves back together.

The Wyvern was given assignments with the rest of the girls. They were sent into towns and cities, with no supplies, and told to retrieve a certain file from a certain office, or drug a bureaucrat, or lure a wealthy man into an alleyway and rob him.

The Red Room's greatest success with the Wyvern was teaching her infiltration and assimilation. She learned by watching the other girls, listening to the things they said, noticing the way they wore their hair, how they pretended to be someone else. She learned social interaction like a science, observing the data and imitating the results.

In her final assignment, in order to put a drug in a Murmansk politician's brandy, she made herself appear to be a wealthy man's daughter and charmed her way into the politician's manor. From there it was a simple task to slip through the ornate corridors into the man's office, place the drug, hide under a divan to ensure the drug was consumed, and then climb three stories down to the bicycle she'd stolen. She was never told what the drug was, but on her way there had worked out that it was ricin. The politician would be dead in a day.

On her way to the extraction point, the Wyvern was questioned by a police officer concerned that she was out by herself. She smiled prettily and assured him that her  _papa_ said it was alright for her to ride home from her  _babushka's_ house. He patted her on the head and sent her on her way.

Madame B. said that her programming made her too blank to be truly convincing, but that she would reasonably pass against an untrained mark.

Sometimes, when the Wyvern pretended to laugh and smile and gossip, she felt uneasy. The false actions called to something inside her, something she was sure should be buried. But then she would be thrown into a fight against three girls who hated her, and the familiarity would vanish.

The Red Room taught the Wyvern about womanhood. She sat with ten other girls her age as one of Madame B.'s teachers told them what to expect, and what men would want. The teacher, a slender woman with silver hair, told them how they could exploit it.

When the girls went to their ballet lessons, the Wyvern would continue with an engineering tutor.  _A weapon does not dance_ , said the Project Leader. Madame B. had scoffed at him, but didn't push it.

In the dead of winter, one of the girls graduated. She was a poised, fine-boned girl of sixteen, but she took her opponents apart when she fought. All, of course, except for the Wyvern.

The black-haired girl the Wyvern had killed was supposed to graduate as well.

When the graceful girl came back from her graduation, pale and fierce, she shot the Wyvern a look of pure loathing. The Wyvern wondered if the black-haired girl had been her friend, or if she hated the Wyvern simply because she was better. The graceful girl left the Red Room with nothing, and never came back.

"You ought to consider a similar graduation for your project," the Wyvern overheard Madame B. say to the Project Leader, as the Wyvern withstood the blows from two older girls. She would be bruised, but her bones would never break.

"I am reluctant to resort to such a final measure. The Wyvern may prove useful beyond her skills."

Madame B. gave an unimpressed  _hmph_. The Wyvern broke a girl's arm.

 

* * *

 

October, 1995 ( _9 Years Old_ )  
The Red Room, Russia

The Wyvern woke, and climbed off her thin mattress. The tile was cold under her feet. She dressed in the Red Room uniform – loose black trousers and a grey and blue t-shirt – pulled on her shoes, and left her small room. Madame B. had first put her in the dorms with the other girls, but they'd kept trying to kill her and she'd kept breaking the handcuffs they used to chain her to the bed. She must have been doing it in her sleep. She didn't know why – she never remembered dreaming.

The Wyvern paced through the academy, drawing glares from the girls who passed her. She observed them, noted the degree of their hatred, their stance, their potential strengths and weaknesses in a fight, but maintained her blank, forward-facing stare.

She met the Project Leader at the foot of the ornate stairs. She normally took breakfast in the dining hall, checking her food for poisons and sitting alone in the corner, but the Project Leader had asked to meet her this morning.

"Wyvern," he said as she approached.

"Sir." He had taken to greeting her during her time at the Red Room. It could have been a reaction to her social integration training, but she suspected that he enjoyed showing up Madame B. with his superior asset, and saw offering the asset greetings as a form of reward.

"We are leaving the Academy, Wyvern." The Project Leader had a gleam in his eyes. He was as impeccably dressed as ever, in his dark suit and with his white blonde hair slicked back. "They are introducing a new batch of pupils, which will take up their time, and I believe you have learned what you can here."

"Yes, sir," said the Wyvern.

The other members of the project approached: Sanders, one of her scientists, two of the chair's mechanics, and three soldiers. One of the soldiers had a curved scar under his left eye, and shot the Wyvern a sneer.

Marino had remained in the Québec base, as the Project Leader didn't want his knowledge getting out.

Each of the project members had a bag. The Wyvern had nothing.

"The Wyvern has proven herself to be a worthy successor to the Winter Soldier," the Project Leader announced to the others. They nodded, pride in their features, not even glancing at the Wyvern. "I think it's time to test her."

They were farewelled at the door of the Academy by Madame B. and her teachers. She and the Project Leader exchanged veiled insults and threats for a few moments. The Wyvern scanned the room – an ingrained habit – and saw a door cracked open to her left. As she looked, a face appeared in the crack: an ivory face with piercing green eyes, framed by a shock of curly red hair. The girl was about the Wyvern's age, and obviously new. The other girls knew how to spy without being caught. The Wyvern stared back at the girl, blank, until she looked away.

"Well, Madame, let us both hope to never have the pleasure again." The Project Leader flashed a smile at Madame B., and then walked out of the Academy. The Wyvern was quick to follow, but the Madame was not done with her yet.

A hand shot out, catching the Wyvern by the shoulder. She looked up into Madame B.'s face, into her bottomless eyes.

" _Do svidaniya, chudobishche._ " [" _Goodbye, monster._ "]

The Wyvern waited until the woman released her arm, then looked away and walked into the open air, following her master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French trigger words! Didn’t make sense for them to use Russian given their location and the ethnicity of the Chief Scientist.  
> Only glimpses of major characters this time, but we’ll be back with a very important character next chapter.  
> I originally wasn’t going to include Natasha, as it looked like she was in her teens in the Red Room flashback in Age of Ultron, but I just couldn’t help myself. She’d be about to turn eleven when we see her here.  
> Let me know what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

October, 1995 ( _9 Years Old_ )  
Hydra Facility, Siberia

The Wyvern looked out the window as the helicopter roared across the desolate Siberian wastes. She knew the snowy forests of the Québec facility, and the bitter streets around the Red Room, but this was a new kind of winter she had never witnessed. Ice crystals tore along the snow-laden rock, borne on screeching winds. It was a monochrome world, black rock and white snow, where no human would think to set foot.

The Program Leader had just read her words to her, and the Wyvern's body was motionless,  _ready to comply._

The helicopter descended on the near-invisible bunker, just a few satellite poles and half-buried metal hatches on the summit of a frozen rock. When they landed, the Wyvern and her handlers strode across the icy ground to a metal slab door hidden in the rock. Two guards in green camouflage and hats nodded to the newcomers, and one of them pressed a keycode into the pad by the door to allow them in.

The bunker was made of concrete slabs and metal reinforcements. It was a cold place, that reminded the Wyvern of the Québec facility. They had wiped her consistently in the Red Room, but they didn't take the memories of her time in Québec. She didn't know what they were wiping when they put her in the machine, but it must have been nonessential for the mission.

"Ah, Karpov!" the Program Leader called to a soldier wearing the camouflage uniform of the Russian Armed Forces. His red hat marked him out as a Colonel. "How wonderful to see you again."

" _General-yekh Petrov,_ " [" _Ex-General Petrov,_ "] Karpov spat, his mouth pursed. A bald man with a severe stare stood to his left.

"Ah, you're half right. I go by Peters, now."

Finding that unworthy of a response, Karpov turned to one of his men. " _Gotovy li aktiv_?" [" _Is the asset ready?_ "] His accent was heavy.

" _Da, Polkovnik._ " [" _Yes, Colonel._ "]

"You think he will be fighting fit after being frozen in a box?" The Project Leader asked, falling into step beside Karpov as they moved toward an elevator. The bald man walked beside the Wyvern, glaring at her.

"He has been for the past seventy years," Karpov replied.

"And I can't help but notice that you said  _aktiv._ Is my Wyvern only to face one of your assets?" The Project Leader's voice was light.

As they waited for the elevator cage, Karpov's face darkened. "Do not taunt me with a question you already know the answer to."

The Project Leader turned to the bald man, taking in his heavy glare. "And you must be one of the  _Batal'on smerti_ ," [" _death squad,_ "] he said. "You ought to be thankful for the Wyvern. If she hadn't been assigned that serum, you'd be frozen with the rest of your comrades."

The man simply levelled the Project Leader with a deeper glare.

"Your project denied Borya his chance at greatness," Karpov said, his tone acid. "You ought to show more respect."

The Project Leader shrugged.

Karpov, Borya, the Project Leader, the Wyvern, and soldiers from both projects entered the elevator. It was an uncomfortable fit. The Wyvern ended up wedged between Karpov and the Project Leader. She was half their size, and the press of bodies made her sweat.

As the elevator rattled down, Karpov looked down his nose at her. The Wyvern stared straight ahead, pretending not to notice his disdainful inspection.

"At least the  _Soldat_ is not a child that requires years of training. He is always ready, for whatever HYDRA needs."

The elevator opened. The Project Leader straightened his jacket, then gestured for Karpov and the glaring Borya to exit first. "Well, we shall have to see, won't we?"

The room they had been brought to was like a long, low warehouse, with a cage in the centre. The cage was made of black metal bars, which looked like they might hold up to even the Wyvern's strength.

There was a man waiting for them. In actuality there were several men in the room, but the Wyvern knew there was only one who could be the  _Soldat_.

He stood motionless in black leather and Kevlar armour, his blank gaze fixed on the door. His arm gleamed silver in the hanging lights, highlighting the red star. He was the sole occupant of the cage.

The Wyvern felt a chill run down her back at the sight of the man. Her instincts, drilled into her over four years of training, screamed that this was a dangerous enemy. She recognised something in him that was inside her – the emptiness, maybe. She saw something in his gaze shift when he spotted her, and a furrow creased his brow. But it was gone as soon as it appeared, and then he was just as blank as her. The Wyvern fell into parade rest and waited for an order.

The Project Leader turned to the Wyvern. "Defeat the Soldier." She heard Karpov pass on similar instructions to the Soldier.

One of Karpov's men opened the door to the cage. The Soldier didn't move.

Rolling her shoulders, the Wyvern paced past the Project Leader, past Karpov, past the man at the door to the cage. She stepped inside, and the door slammed behind her.

There was silence in the room. There had to be twenty men surrounding the cage, but none of them made a sound. The Soldier certainly didn't speak. He was still blank, but she could feel the entirety of his focus trained on her, on her small size and her seemingly breakable limbs. Certainly, he could break some of them, but she was stronger than these men knew.

She didn't move either.

She scanned her opponent: his armour looked tough, all thick Kevlar and buckles. Her armour was made of a lighter material, but could resist blades. She wouldn't put it past Karpov to arm his Soldier.

The only flesh the Soldier bared was his right hand and his face. His metal arm was loose by his side, but she didn't let that fool her – he looked like a fast man, and she knew better than to underestimate him.

She met the Soldier's eyes. They were a clear grey-blue, slightly shrouded by his long, unclean hair. She had never seen a look like his in an enemy before: she was used to being underestimated and appraised by her teachers, used to being hated by the girls at the Red Room. In the Soldier's eyes she only saw that he knew he must fight her. She wondered what her eyes showed him.

Without anyone having to tell them to, the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier stalked toward one another. He swung first, a brutal downward punch with the metal arm, but the Wyvern slid between his legs and kicked at the back of his knees – he was ready for it, spinning away and aiming another punch at her on the ground. She rolled away from the metal fist. She sprang up to fly at his face but he leaned back, so she landed the punch against his gut. It only knocked him back a step, making him grunt, but the glimpse she caught of his eyes told her that he was re-evaluating her as he fought. They swung and ducked around each other, the Wyvern using her size to evade his metal arm, aiming blows at his legs and groin.

She was using every bit of training she had ever learned – she knew she'd never faced an enemy like this, so fast and so strong. She could tell the Soldier was also surprised by her: he didn't underestimate her, not for a second, but he kept adapting his fighting style to try to outmanoeuvre her, using his bulk one moment and striking fast as a snake in the next. They were both silent fighters, letting out only the occasional grunt or growl. They were both precise; thinking moves ahead, pressing forward and stepping back in an instant.

He had backed her up against the edge of the cage, so the Wyvern leapt up, sprang off one of the metal bars and spun in the air, bringing her heel – reinforced by Adamantium – across the Soldier's face. His head cracked to the side and he stumbled, his hair flying across his face.

The Wyvern's ears picked up the sharp intake of breath through Karpov's nostrils, and the Project Leader's low chuckle.

The Wyvern did not let the Soldier catch his breath. She ran after him, pressing her advantage, and saw when he turned to defend himself that a gash had opened along his cheek. She felt a bitter satisfaction at the sight of his blood, then wondered at herself for having such a feeling in a fight. She'd only ever been cold, precise.

This hesitation gave the Soldier enough time to swing his right fist down at her head. The Wyvern caught it just in time, startled at his strength, but her enhanced strength and the Adamantium reinforcing her spine gave her the power to absorb the punch, and to twist him into a takedown. He anticipated the move, locking her in her turn and throwing his metal fist between her shoulder blades.

A metallic  _clang_ echoed through the room, and the Wyvern held steady. In her position the Wyvern could see Karpov and the Project Leader beyond the cage. Karpov's eyes widened, and he turned to look at the Project Leader.

 _He can't break my back_ , the Wyvern thought, as she flipped up in the Soldier's hold and twisted her legs around his neck.  _He can't break it, regardless of how hard he hits or how much flesh comes away._ She tried to squeeze the life out of his throat with her calves, but he got a better angle on her, seizing her by the upper arm and throwing her against the edge of the cage.

The Wyvern didn't even register the metal clang of her spine and hips as she collided with the bars. His grip on her arm had shaken something loose in her; a memory of fire and tears and pain. She shook her head, but the memory remained. She looked up at the Soldier as he stalked toward her, long hair shrouding his blank gaze, and a well of fury erupted in her chest.

 _My mission_.

The Wyvern flew at the Soldier, raining down punches and kicks, ignoring the blows he landed on her in return. She wanted to punch past his armour, to reach right into his chest and pull out his heart.

But her fury blinded her. The Soldier was able to fend off her hailstorm of blows and pin her against the cage with his metal arm. She pulled at the arm, muscles straining, but she was still too small. She could crush a man's bones, but she couldn't pry the Soldier's arm away from her sternum.

She glared into his eyes, feeling that surely everyone in the room could see the fire burning inside her. But all they saw was a child trapped against metal bars by a man twice her size.

The Soldier saw it, though. She could see in his eyes that he recognised her, in some shape or form. He searched her gaze for a moment, his face loosening. But then he reached up with his other hand, lightning fast, and slammed her head against the bar.

The Wyvern dropped to the floor, stunned. She tried to get her arms under her, but they shook and gave out, and she slumped against the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Soldier's combat boots. He didn't walk away.

With her face pressed against the cool concrete, the Wyvern heard Karpov speak: "No matter what you have put in her, she is still a weak child. A failed imitation of the  _Soldat_."

The Project Leader gave no response.

 

* * *

 

The cage opened, and soldiers pulled the Wyvern to her feet.

"Walk," the Project Leader told her, and she complied _._ She staggered out of the cage after him and the rest of his men, her head reeling.

"I will be seeing you soon, Karpov!" the Project Leader called as he left the room. The Wyvern looked over her shoulder and saw the Winter Soldier standing where she'd left him, only now his flesh hand was trembling. Squinting past the growing pain reverberating in her skull, the Wyvern saw the Winter Soldier's eyes darting back and forth frantically, as if searching for something.

"Wipe him and put him away," she heard Karpov say, and then she left the room.

The Project Leader made the Wyvern walk back to the helicopter, despite her stumbling. The bump on the back of her head was aching, and the hanging lights of the bunker made her wince. Her left eye had closed up, and there were bruises on her shoulders and chest from the Winter Soldier's blows.

The blast of cold air above the bunker was a relief, cooling her overheated face and soothing her stinging wounds. Abruptly, the Wyvern doubled over and threw up outside the metal door. The two guards stepped back, making disgusted noises.

"Concussion, sir," she heard Sanders tell the Project Leader.

"I can see that," he replied, voice clipped. "Follow, Wyvern."

She complied.

On the helicopter, the Wyvern leaned into her seat with her eyes pressed shut, concentrating on not throwing up. But in the darkness behind her eyelids, odd images flickered across her mind. The Soldier's arms under her, carrying her to the ocean. His footsteps crunching across the shadowy ground. A flaming wreck of a car, with three bodies inside.

 _Tony_ …

Unbeknownst to the Wyvern, she had said that last thought out loud. Lost in her aching head, she didn't notice how the occupants of the helicopter froze, glancing at one another.

The Project Leader shot a look at Sanders. "Do you have the…"

"Yes." Sanders pulled a vial from her bag, drew it into a syringe with expert fingers, and injected the substance into the Wyvern's arm. The Wyvern Project leaders watched as the Wyvern's fevered muttering and fidgeting stilled, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"It'll keep her still until we return," Sanders muttered, putting away her equipment. "We'll wipe her as soon as we get back."

"I thought the cognitive recalibration  _worked_ ," the Project Leader hissed. "Of all the places to have a relapse-"

"It did work, sir. The blow to her head must have shaken some latent memories loose."

Eyeing his Chief Scientist a moment longer, the Project Leader relaxed into his seat. "Today was a failure, Sanders. The Wyvern showed promise, but… there is clearly more room for improvement. We'll move on to Stage Three as soon as we return."

"Of course, sir."

 

* * *

 

HYDRA Facility, Québec

The Wyvern stood in the central lab of the facility, flanked by the senior mechanics, engineers, and scientists. They were waiting.

The Wyvern was favoring her left side, due to wounds along her right chest and shoulder. Her eye was still half-shut with a bruise. Her head ached more than usual after a wipe, and she had discovered an egg-shaped lump on the back of her scalp, under her shaggy brown hair. Her handlers had not given a reason for these injuries, and the Wyvern had not asked. She stood at parade rest in the lab, staring into the middle distance.

After a few minutes, the Project Leader strode into the lab and the technicians all stood to attention. He smoothed down his black suit, leaving them waiting in silence.

Finally, he spoke. "We all know that the project isn't complete." He eyed each of the technicians, finally landing on the weedy Marino. "Since its conception, the Wyvern Project has been about creating the ultimate weapon – fast, smart, strong, lethal. And with advantages that no other weapon has had before." The Project Leader strode toward the Wyvern, footsteps ringing out on the concrete floor, until he stood over her, looking down at her bruised face. "The Wyvern is a blade, but still the forging is not complete."

The Project Leader stepped back again. "Colonel Karpov's weapon is a soldier, a man bound to the frozen earth. But the Wyvern –  _our Wyvern_  – was never meant for the ground."

After another long silence, he pressed his hands together. "Begin Stage Three. The Wyvern will help."

"Yes, sir!" cried the technicians, scurrying to their work benches. The Wyvern stood still a moment longer, watching the Project Leader's back as he left the room. Then she turned to the nearest mechanic and stared at him until he gave her a task.

 

* * *

 

Stage Three was a feat of engineering, mechanics, computer science and cybernetics, combined with Marino's work on Adamantium. It brought the non-combatants of the facility together for the better part of a year, collaborating and theorising and building.

The Wyvern was in the thick of it. She tweaked designs, carved moulds, spent hours on intricate wiring and welding. She calculated weight distribution and cybernetic neural connections. She designed and built smaller, more efficient precision jet engines, the size of a water bottle with the output of a much larger engine. She found herself turning over designs in her mind while she walked the facility's corridors, while she ate her perfectly kilojoule-balanced meals, while she lay in her cot at night.

She mostly worked with Marino, as she was best able to understand the molecular programming involved with Adamantium. The scientist had huge round glasses and buck teeth, and the Wyvern often noticed him looking at her with a furrowed brow. She would look up, silently asking what the problem was, but he would shake his head and mutter something about alloy manipulation or thermodynamics. Sometimes he asked her what she thought about her work, and he once asked her if she enjoyed it. The Wyvern did not have the programming to answer these questions, beyond repeating "ready to comply".

The Wyvern's mind was brilliant, capable of solving problems in ways that the scientists hadn't even considered. But she never decided to fix a problem on her own, and never suggested an aspect of the design that hadn't been suggested before. The technicians knew they had to order her to attend to a certain problem, or design a certain machine part. She was creative when ordered to be.

The Wyvern knew what she and the technicians were building. She knew it was for her, and she knew what would happen to her, but she did it anyway.

Sometimes, when monitoring computer simulations, the Wyvern felt an odd tingling in her diaphragm. Once, after managing to weld a particularly tricky section of carbon fibre webbing to an adamantium rod, she found herself  _smiling._ The Wyvern quickly wiped the expression away, startled, but did not inform her handlers. She was  _enjoying_ building Stage Three. And the prospect of the completed project only made the tingling in her stomach more intense.

She didn't tell her handlers about her malfunction, but she was wiped the next day anyway.

 

* * *

 

In the meantime, the Wyvern's regular training continued. She honed her combat, weapons and intelligence skills, and was given extra training in engineering and computer science. HYDRA operatives continued to cycle in and out of the base, forging the Wyvern's skills. She worked with two HYDRA weapons developers for four months, and some of her designs ended up being produced for agents.

In addition to regular training, the Wyvern started flight training. In the dead of night they flew over the island in a stealth jet, and the Wyvern would parachute into the forest, navigating the way the air currents shifted around her body, and learning how to descend unseen. She was also taught to fly various helicopters and planes – she was mostly given the specifications and manuals of the different aircraft and taught in a flight simulator, but the Project Leader also permitted the Wyvern to fly a few of the facility's helicopters and stealth jets. She was provided with an early design for an aircraft called a Quinjet, and memorized its flight capabilities.

The Wyvern was also sent on missions. She'd begun her career as an assassin at the Red Room, and now the Project Leader clearly believed she was ready. She stalked a man down the streets of Winnipeg before slipping a knife into his heart, and vanished before anyone realised why the man had stumbled. She laced a retired Michigan politician's air conditioning with sarin gas. She broke a woman's fingers while another HYDRA operative shouted questions at her.

The Wyvern was usually wiped after a mission, but often they didn't bother. She was rarely told why she had to do the things she was sent to do, and she had no one to tell. She was mostly used for stealth assassinations, though her skills were also utilised for intelligence recovery, hacking, and on a few occasions she stood in as security for a non-combatant HYDRA operative.

It was about this time that the Wyvern was briefed on S.H.I.E.L.D., and HYDRA's role within it. The Project Leader did not anticipate the Wyvern ever coming into contact with S.H.I.E.L.D., but had decided it was important for HYDRA's greatest weapon to be aware of HYDRA's oldest enemy.  _S.H.I.E.L.D.'s vision of the world as a peaceful and equal place is a fallacy,_ he told the Wyvern as she scanned the S.H.I.E.L.D. folder.  _HYDRA is going to correct the imbalance in the world. You are a tool in our arsenal._

_Yes, sir._

 

* * *

 

When Stage Three was near to the date of implementation, the Wyvern was prepped for new enhancements. Marino asked the Project Leader, a few days before the procedure date, if it was necessary to make Stage Three so invasive.

The Project Leader levelled him with a look of disdain. "You would weaken the weapon, Marino?"

Marino shrunk into himself. "No sir."

"Then we will proceed as planned."

The Wyvern thought she was used to pain – the ongoing experimentation on her body, the brutal training. But she'd forgotten the excruciating fire of being cut open and having Adamantium built into her skeleton. They had wiped the memory of it away, but the moment the scalpel touched her bare skin it came rushing back.

She screamed again this time, and tried to fight them. But they'd reinforced the metal restraints as she grew, resisting her enhanced strength, and the Project Leader was there reciting her words to keep her mind small and obedient. She gripped the table, feeling the metal crumple and groan under her fingers. Her face was pressed into the hole in the table so she could only see the concrete ground, and her blood dripping onto it.

Marino and three other technicians worked on her exposed spine; reinforcing, building, installing. Marino's voice shook but his hands were steady. When they began welding, the Wyvern actually passed out from the pain. That had never happened to her before.

When she woke, they were gluing her skin around the new objects in her back. She let out a long moan, gritted between her teeth, and sensed Marino pause.

"Marino?" the Project Leader muttered.

"Just finishing up now, sir." Marino's gloved hands returned to the Wyvern's spine, ensuring the closest contact between skin and mechanics.

When they finished their work, the restraints hissed open and the technicians backed away from the table, peeling off their gloves. The Wyvern relaxed imperceptibly into the table, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to concentrate on anything other than the spikes of pain stabbing into her back.

"Well?" asked the Project Leader.

Marino's voice was still shaky. "The procedure appears to be successful, sir. The moorings are in place, supported by the Adamantium structuring. The skin and muscles should integrate with the moorings over the next day or so. I'd recommend that the Wyvern doesn't move until then."

There was a long pause.

"Very well," said the Project Leader.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern didn't move for twenty-seven hours, her bare back open to the cold air as she waited for her shuddering body to accept the new enhancements. They cleaned away her blood, so the only thing she had to look at was the hard, grey concrete floor.

They tested the enhancements at the end of the twenty-seven hours. The Wyvern didn't actually see the final result until a week later, when she caught a glimpse of her naked back in a lab window. The skin had already mostly healed, leaving a large red welt around two open, round holes in her back. The holes were each about the diameter of an apple, two and a half inches across. The holes were Adamantium sockets. They were fused to her spine and rib-cage, offering significant support and weight distribution. From what she could see – and from what she could remember from the designs – the holes weren't very deep, but they would always remain open. She knew they were water resistant, but it still made her queasy to see herself made so vulnerable.

That night, lying on her front in her narrow bunk, the Wyvern reached behind her and ran a finger over the metal moorings. The Adamantium was cool, soothing the raw, red skin of her back. The Wyvern slipped a finger into the mooring and jolted – the touch had echoed throughout the Adamantium in her body, resonating along her bones from her neck to her heels. Pulling her hand away, the Wyvern closed her eyes and slept.

 

* * *

 

Testing the enhancements involved a lot of tools and parts being inserted into the moorings on the Wyvern's back, at first making her wince in pain, and then shudder at the alien sensations. The technicians seemed uneasy at such displays of emotion from the project, but all of her training couldn't keep her from reacting. She could  _feel_ the moorings, could feel the cybernetic linkup that the technicians had so painstakingly wired into her body. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before, and she knew it would take a while to grow used to having  _more_ of herself. As the Stage Three implementation date approached, the tingling in the Wyvern's diaphragm grew ever more prominent, despite the times she was put in the machine.

Finally, the day came. The Wyvern was motionless in a chair, after yet another test performed on the neural sensitivity of her moorings, when the Project Leader walked into the lab. Sanders, Marino and three other senior technicians looked up as he approached.

"Well?" He asked, cocking an eyebrow.

The technicians looked to Sanders. The bald scientist leaned back in her chair.

"Stage Three is ready, sir. We are ready for the first test."

The Project Leader looked across the lab at the Wyvern, who stared at the floor.

"Is the project ready? Does she understand what the testing involves?"

Sanders shrugged. "I don't know, sir. But the Wyvern will do what we ask her. So, yes. She's ready."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the Wyvern’s enhancements have so far been easy enough to understand – Stage Three will be revealed next chapter.  
> Something you liked? Something you didn’t? Let me know!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been excited to get to this chapter, hope you are too!  
> Content warning for attempted underage non-con (It’s not who you think it is, and it’s never a real risk).

September, 1996 ( _10 Years Old_ )  
HYDRA Facility, Québec.

The Wyvern stood on the facility's launchpad, shivering. She was dressed only in the light jumpsuit she usually wore under her armor – the technicians had wanted her to have maximum maneuverability, though they hadn't considered the island's plunging temperatures. Or they just didn't care.

The launchpad was dimly lit, though the Project Leader had ensured that the island and the ocean for miles around was unoccupied. Pine trees surrounded two thirds of the launchpad, but the other third plunged into a granite cliff over the still ocean.

The Wyvern didn't come outside all that often, except for stealth training in the forest, flight training, and missions.

Technicians scurried around, murmuring to each other in the evening air and preparing the final arrangements of Stage Three. Marino stood on the edge of the launchpad, watching the Wyvern shiver.

The Wyvern knew that not all of the trembling was from the cold, however. She was...  _excited._ She'd labelled the feeling the day before, after hearing a technician say that he was excited for lunch. She thought that was the name of the tingling sensation in her stomach. She knew she ought to tell her handlers, but the feeling would be wiped away soon enough, and she wasn't going against orders. A deeper part of the Wyvern knew that her excitement was wrong for another reason, but she couldn't put a finger on it, and delving into that part of herself made her head throb.

The Wyvern knew that there were parts of the Stage Three designs that she hadn't seen, things that they were keeping from her. But as she watched the technicians open the large, mechanical wings on the tarmac, she found she didn't mind.

The wings had been modeled after paintings of dragons of old, though the flight design was based on bats. Adamantium formed the 'skeleton' of the wings: metal bones running along the tops of the wings, with five fingers or 'phalanges' reaching down. Carbon fibre webbing stretched between the metal bones, a jet-black surface against the gun-metal grey of the Adamantium. Laid out flat on the ground, each wing was as long as an adult human stood tall.

The base of each wing led to a nub of Adamantium with inbuilt mechanical ports – exactly the diameter and depth of the moorings in the Wyvern's back. The smaller jet engines that the Wyvern had designed were installed at the tip of each Adamantium 'finger', and at the base of the wings, closer to where the Wyvern's body would be. Altogether there were fourteen engines. The wings could theoretically fly without jet propulsion, but that would require significant effort on the Wyvern's part, reliance on weather patterns, and would not get her to nearly the same speeds.

The technicians had installed the wings a few times in the lab, usually in small pieces, one at a time, for lots of minute tests to ensure that the cybernetic linkup was working. But she'd never worn both, complete wings at the same time. A tremor ran over the Wyvern's skin as she looked at the wings, stretched open on the ground.

Finally, the Project Leader arrived. The Wyvern knew he liked to arrive last, because he'd often made her stand and wait with him before sweeping into meetings with other HYDRA operatives. His gelled blonde hair didn't budge in the evening breeze.

"How are we looking?" he asked Sanders, who was overseeing the final preparations.  
"Ready to begin," she replied, her French accent heavy due to her focus on a clipboard. "Gagnon, Morin,  _commencez l'installation._ " [" _Begin the installation_."]

Two burly techs nodded to Sanders, and knelt by the wings on the ground. Carefully, they folded the Adamantium skeletons in on themselves, so the wings became a fifth of the size, like a folded-up umbrella. The techs gripped the wings by the base and near the top, and lifted them from the ground.

"Turn, Wyvern," Sanders barked.

The Wyvern complied. She kept her hands by her sides and braced her legs, feeling the breeze pluck at the hole cut in the back of her shirt. The crowd of technicians were silent, so the Wyvern could easily hear Gagnon and Morin's footsteps shuffling toward her.

Since she was standing, they had to install both wings at the same time to prevent her from becoming unbalanced. So when Gagnon and Morin finally slotted the base of each wing into the moorings in her spine, the Wyvern suddenly had twice the weight, twice the input, twice the sensation.

She shuddered, closing her eyes as information flooded in from each wing – weight, temperature, wind pressure, the sensation of the techs' hands on the Adamantium bones. She could  _feel_ the wings, though they were utterly alien. It was as if she'd grown an extra set of arms. The influx of sensation was painful, a sharp bloom of light behind her eyes. The wings themselves seemed to throb as well, like an exposed nerve, or a toothache.

Gagnon and Morin supported the wings for another moment or two, then stepped away. The Wyvern felt the weight of the Adamantium and carbon fibre settle entirely on her, but the reinforcements to her skeleton allowed her to bear the weight. She shifted her posture, straightening her back so she had a strong weight-bearing line from her shoulders, to her hips, to her feet. She cocked her head, visualizing the shape of the folded wings on her back and feeling their very real presence. They  _were_  heavy, but much lighter than she had anticipated. It would take some time to get used to this.

"Wyvern?" said the Project Leader, after a minute of silence. He had moved around the launchpad and was now standing somewhere to her left. She could feel everyone's eyes on her.

The Project Leader had not asked her a question, but the Wyvern felt she ought to give a response.

She braced herself, then unfolded the wings. She'd gone over this dozens of times in simulations, with EEG cords linked to her temples and wires stuffed into her moorings. But it felt different in the open air, with the cybernetic neurons in the wings registering the breeze brushing against the Adamantium bones.

The wings opened slowly, hesitantly, the right one dipping slightly as she lost concentration for a moment. But soon they were stretched to full capacity, the Adamantium skeleton aloft on either side of the Wyvern's body. The technicians could see the muscles in the Wyvern's back bunching and cording around the moorings, all the way up to her shoulders.

With the wings fully outstretched, the Wyvern found it difficult to stand still in the evening breeze. She opened her eyes, blinking at her shadow on the ground. Her body was so  _small_ , just a narrow line slotted between the enormous, reaching wings. She rolled her shoulders and saw the shadow of her wings shift in response.

Sanders was speaking: "… large enough to support her even as she grows into full maturity, though she may get slower without further development-"

"Sanders," said the Project Leader. His voice was even, but the Wyvern heard the anger in it. "Shut up."

Silence rang out on the launchpad. To the west, the sun glowed orange on the horizon.

"Wyvern," the Project Leader repeated. "Show us what you can do."

"Sir," Sanders objected, "I don't think the project is-"

But the Wyvern was already sprinting for the edge of the launchpad, drawing the wings in toward her body, and then leapt off the edge of the cliff. Half the techs ran after her, sticking their heads over the edge.

The wind shrieked around the Wyvern, pulling at her thin jumpsuit, at her wings, at her loose hair. But she kept the wings pressed close to her sides, plummeting down the side of the grey cliff. The world was a blur: orange sun, grey cliff and white sea. She wondered if she ought to feel scared. But the Wyvern had never known herself to feel such a thing before, and this did not feel like a moment for fear.

When she saw the white foam flowing around the sharp rocks at the bottom of the cliff, she threw her wings open. The wind caught at the stretched carbon fibre, pushing her up from the beach and flinging her into the sky. The Wyvern gasped and tried to process the readings from her wings: the wind flowing over the taught surfaces, the moisture gathered along the tips of the Adamantium from her close call with the ocean.

But it felt all too much, trying to understand each piece separately, so she let it wash over her – if she thought of the wings not as foreign attachments, but as  _herself_ , the readings started to make sense. The Wyvern fired up her engines and gasped again as she rocketed skyward. Her eyes watered at the force of the wind, and her hair was ripped out of its tie to stream behind her like a flag. Her arms were pressed against her sides, and her legs flailed a little in the jetstream. Her wings held steady, though, the Adamantium unbowed by the wind.

The Wyvern blinked the tears from her eyes and realized she was about to hit the clouds, so she reduced power to the engines – a hard thing to remember how to do from the simulations at two thousand feet – twisted her body and flew horizontally, her breath catching again in her chest when she saw how high she'd flown.

She could see the whole island from here, a long, isolated mound of granite cliffs and pine trees. The base was well hidden, but she could just make out the dim light from the launchpad. The sun was sinking below the horizon to her left, and the ocean stretched for miles around, painted a deep yellow by the sunset. In the distance she could make out the mainland.

The Wyvern lifted her right wing and cut smoothly through the air to the left, then turned the move into a corkscrew that blurred the sky and the sea. She beat her wings once, twice, bringing her out of the spin and lifting her back up to the clouds.

The Wyvern threw her arms out and closed her eyes, feeling the air slip over the front edges of her wings, over her face, down her body. She felt weightless, despite her technical knowledge that it was the engines and the aerodynamic lift keeping her aloft. This was nothing like the simulations, or even like her flight training. This was…

Her eyes snapped open. This was  _enjoyable._ Feeling uneasy, the Wyvern tilted her wings and circled down to the launchpad. She wasn't meant to feel.  _Weapons do not feel_. The wings were for her handler's missions, nothing more.

Intending to demonstrate the mission readiness of the wings to the Project Leader, the Wyvern plummeted the last six hundred feet, snapping the wings open just in time to pull up her freefall, allowing her to drop lightly to the launchpad. She misjudged it slightly, stumbling a little, but judging by the slack-jawed expressions of the technicians she managed to pull it off. The Wyvern looked like a mess, her dark hair strewn across her face and neck, face flushed, eyes wild. Her wings rose and fell with her heaving breaths.

The Project Leader eyed his project for a long moment. Eventually, he nodded to her, and turned to the technicians. "Well done. Pack it up."

The Wyvern followed her handlers down into the tunnels of the facility, her skin still tingling with the memory of soaring below the clouds.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern trained with her wings every day. The Project Leader ordered them removed less and less, until it was standard for her to pace down the facility's corridors with her wings tucked behind her; a black, silent shadow.

The Wyvern flew the skies above the base when the area was clear, getting used to working as one with her new limbs. She worked with her flight teachers again. They gave her stealth tests, trying to catch her before she descended silently onto her chosen target and sank knives into its foam heart. She was given obstacle courses through the dense island forest, forcing her to push her wings to their limits to zip and turn past the obstructions.

They fired crossbow bolts and nets and rockets at her as she flew, most of which she avoided.

The Adamantium was resistant to all the abuse, but on more than one occasion a projectile went through the carbon fibre webbing, sending the Wyvern into a controlled glide to the ground to be yelled at by her instructors. The wings were flight capable with a few holes in them, but the Wyvern was meant to be untouchable.

On one occasion she tried to shield herself from a rocket with her left wing and was knocked into the ocean. She had been instructed on how to keep herself afloat with the wings, and theoretically the adamantium formula that she and Marino had worked on wouldn't cause her to sink like a stone, but with half her chest charred and smoking, that was hard to remember. They fished the burned and half-drowned Wyvern out of the water, told her to lie still for the rest of the night, and put her back to work the next day.

The Wyvern also learned to fight while flying, pulling knives and guns from holsters on her uniform and striking an opponent as she rocketed by. She could alternate from swooping through the air to engaging an opponent in hand-to-hand combat in a moment.

The Wyvern got used to her wings, to the rush of information pouring from their sensors. They began to feel like extra limbs, just extensions of her flesh and metal body. She could sense pain from them – not quite like in her body, but when her instructors put a crossbow bolt through her webbing the jolt to the sensors would make her recoil. When the wings were removed so she could be wiped or trained, she felt unnaturally light, as if she might float away.

She continued to be wiped on a regular basis. Still, each time she flew she got a thrill in the pit of her stomach, despite her attempts to discard the feeling.

The Wyvern and the other technicians continued to modify the wings over the years. After her first flight the Wyvern requested goggles, for better visibility. The Project Leader finally approved a pair of sinister looking half-moon goggles with illuminated red lenses. They didn't distort her vision, and the looks on the technician's faces when she wore them with the wings told the Wyvern why he had chosen that design. With her uniform, a black and gunmetal grey combat suit with a cowl that covered her head and face, she looked like a dark monster, glaring with glowing red eyes.

They decided to use the Adamantium as more than a framework, adding a protruding spine at the tip of each 'finger' of the wings – one at the top of each, and five on the bottom. The spines were wickedly sharp and could cut through anything, and the Wyvern quickly adapted them into her fighting style.

They were always honing, developing, refining. If the Wyvern was ordered to find a way to make the wings faster, she figured it out. If she was told to refine the moorings in her back, she designed a better connectivity system and lay still on the table when they dug tools into her spine.

Sanders had the bright idea of extending the Adamantium down the back of the Wyvern's legs, resulting in extendable 'heel spurs'. Essentially, after a lot of blood and screaming, the Wyvern had long, thin barbs that could extend and retract out of each of her heels. The spurs did prove useful to get a grip on things while airborne, and to cut through objects and people with impunity. When they weren't extended, the Wyvern had a smooth metal plate covering each hole in the bottom of her feet, that would clink against the ground when she walked barefoot.

The Wyvern had become what the Project Leader dreamed of years earlier: a cybernetic weapon, stealthy and lethal, that HYDRA could use without fear of failure.

 

* * *

 

February, 1999 ( _12 Years Old_ )  
HYDRA Facility, Québec

"Wyvern."

"Ready to comply."

"Report to the Project Leader's office."

The Wyvern stood, breath still fast from the machine. She turned, allowing two techs to notch her wings into their moorings, and then folded the wings as small as they could go. They had been recently modified to have telescopic limbs, so once the Adamantium had slid together, the folded wings were the size of a backpack. The Wyvern rolled her shoulders, feeling more solid with the weight on her back, and strode out of the room.

It was unusual for her to go to the Project Leader's office. That was where HYDRA's secrets were, and that was none of the Wyvern's business. But she didn't wonder about what she might be going there for. She'd been told to report there, and so she would.

As she walked, she passed a soldier with a curved scar under his left eye. She took note of the look he shot her – unusual, for a regular soldier of the facility. In the fluorescent lights his gaze was… proprietary, almost. A cock of the eyebrow and a small smirk. The Wyvern did not return his gaze, merely noting the oddity and moving on.

When she reached the Project Leader's office a guard by the door let her in, trying to hide how he cringed away from her. That was the response she was used to.

The office was similar to the rest of the base – concrete floors and walls, and a rocky ceiling with fluorescent lighting. The Project Leader's desk was neat, with orderly stacks of files and a boxy computer. The Project Leader himself was neatly dressed as always in a black suit, standing beside a man with greying strawberry-blonde hair in a light grey suit. His suit seemed more expensive than the Project Leader's, but the calm calculation in his blue eyes was eerily familiar. Both men's gazes swivelled to appraise the Wyvern.

"So," said the stranger. His face was lined. "This is where I've been putting all HYDRA's money."

The Project Leader didn't seem pleased by that. "The Wyvern has been immensely successful, Director-"

"I've read the reports, Peters," the Director said, making a quelling gesture with his hands. "That's why I'm here now, to see for myself. I didn't come all the way to Canada for the maple syrup." He turned back to the Wyvern and cocked his head, putting a hand on his jaw. The Wyvern held herself still, unblinking, but not looking at anything in particular. She'd long since gotten used to being observed.

The Director let out a huff of a laugh. "She looks like Howard."

The Project Leader looked even more displeased, but didn't say anything. The Wyvern remained still.

"She's how old again?" the Director asked, looking over his shoulder at the Project Leader.

"Almost thirteen, sir."

"Hm. She's tall."

"The serum continues to interact with her growth, and the Adamantium reinforcement grows along with her."

The Director nodded, then turned back to the Wyvern and clapped his hands together. "Well, Wyvern, let's see what you can do, shall we?"

"Yes, sir."

The Project Leader had designed a series of tests for the Wyvern. First she was taken to the training room, where ten men waited for her. Most of them she hadn't faced before – they must have come with the Director.

The Director and the Project Leader watched the Wyvern take down the men, darting and snapping like a snake. She used her wings only rarely, knocking men aside and putting the deadly spines to their throats. She didn't kill any of them, but the men went away pale-faced and silent.

The Project Leader then gestured to a 400-pound dumbbell, which she lifted over her head with ease. They went to the shooting range, where the Wyvern put knives and bullets through the heads of foam dummies. All the while she could hear the Project Leader reciting her skills, as if from a specification booklet.

It was already night time and they didn't want to draw undue attention to the facility, so the Wyvern wasn't taken above ground to display her flying. But as they entered the facility lab, there were videos cued up of her flying through obstacle courses. The Director's face, as it had been for all the demonstration so far, was impassive. He asked the occasional question, but he was near impossible to read.

The Wyvern was directed toward a computer and given a specific target in China's Ministry of State Security. In ten minutes she had hacked the target's work desktop and presented the Director with a dossier on the man's recent activities. Then the Wyvern was ordered to stand at attention while the Director was shown her various designs and inventions.

At one point the Director asked: "You don't worry you've made the weapon  _too_ smart?"

"I don't believe that such a thing could be possible, sir. No matter how smart she is, the memory suppressing machine and the cognitive recalibration ensures that her intelligence is only utilised for HYDRA's purposes."

"Hm."

Finally, the Project Leader appeared to run out of things to show the Director.

Silence fell in the lab as the Director looked over the files and images before him. He glanced up at the Wyvern.

"Sir?" prompted the Project Leader.

The Director nodded, his eyes shrewd. "I'm impressed, Peters, as I'm sure you expected."

The Project Leader relaxed a little, folding his hands in front of him. "Well, sir, the project has enjoyed an inordinate amount of success-"

"But," the Director continued, "all of this…" he gestured at a video of one of the Wyvern's training night flights. "It's practice. I know she's been on missions, but they're intermittent. Small-time stuff. The Wyvern is clearly a devastating weapon, and we need to use it. Stop using her as a sideshow attraction." At this he levelled the Project Leader with a long look, and then turned to the Wyvern. He walked right up to the cybernetically-enhanced twelve year old, evaluating the blank look in her eyes. He put one wrinkled hand on her shoulder, and made sure his next words resonated throughout the room.

"Use her as a  _weapon_."

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern's training had come to an end. She continued to learn new skills and adapt, but no more specialists were sent to the Québec facility specifically to train HYDRA's weapon. Instead, the facility became the hub of HYDRA's North American and Canadian activities, with the Wyvern running point. But she wasn't restricted to that part of the world – she went wherever HYDRA needed her to, from Alaska to South Africa to Japan.

The Project Leader's vision had been for a weapon that wasn't stowed away at the end of a mission, but instead could be sent on missions of all degrees of difficulty and hold a non-combatant role back at base. The Wyvern became one of HYDRA's most proficient hackers, used to monitor S.H.I.E.L.D and organisations around the world. She designed weapons, machines and programs for HYDRA's interests. And when they weren't using her mind, they sent the winged beast into the world to feed crisis, reap war, and extend HYDRA's dominance over the globe. She stole secrets, assassinated HYDRA's enemies, and was often an ominous shadow behind a HYDRA agent's shoulder, an attack dog on a chain.

She was HYDRA's demon, a curse they could bring down on their enemies.

 

* * *

 

September, 1999 ( _13 Years Old_ )  
Khabarovsk, Russian Far East

Natalia giggled as her target looped his arm over her shoulder, and fought not to wrinkle her nose at his overpowering cologne.

 _You are made of marble,_ whispered Madame B.'s voice in her mind. She could suffer this over-cologned man with a taste for fifteen year old girls. The trouble was that she  _wanted_ to kill him, to put a knife through his smirking mouth, but she wouldn't get to. No matter how elegantly she killed him, it would be seen as a failure.

 _Deliver the target to the roof and leave._ Such mysterious orders, especially for an ungraduated pupil. But Madame B. had seen Natalia's potential years ago and trained her all the harder for it.

" _Ya khochu uvidet' zvezdy_ ," [" _I want to see the stars_ ,"] she laughed, pulling at the target's arm. He came with her, laughing at his – seemingly drunken – groomed mark.

" _Vo chto by to ni stalo, milyy. Dayayte nemnogo pozabotimsya._ " [" _By all means, darling. Let's get some privacy._ "] He put his hand over hers as they climbed the stairs, and Natalia played up her stumbling. His hand had reached her lower back by the time they spilled out onto the roof.

_You are made of marble._

It was dark on the rooftop. Natalia could indeed see the stars, but she only pretended to admire them as the target pulled her out to the edge of the roof. He was crooning about the river, trying to get her to look out at it – no doubt so he could start assaulting her in earnest.

Instead, she slipped a hand into her coat jacket, whipped out the vial of sedative and jammed it into the target's reeking neck.

" _Na samom dele, mne ne nravyatsya zvezdy,_ " [" _Actually, I don't care for the stars,_ "] she said, as the light slipped out of his eyes and he crumpled at her feet. " _Mudak_." [" _Asshole._ "]

Her mission completed, all Natalia had left to do was head to her extraction point. But it felt odd, leaving the target unconscious on an empty rooftop. She wasn't meant to question her missions, only complete them, but… she had three hours to get to the extraction point, a journey that would only take forty minutes with the motorbike she'd stolen.

Shrugging, the Widow-In-Training got comfortable behind a pair of water tanks. For an hour she watched the crumpled target, not moving a muscle in her body. She couldn't see much in the darkness, but she noticed when the target started to stir and mutter.  _Is this the plan?_ Natalia wondered.  _To lure him to a rooftop and then let him go home, confused?_

Later, the Black Widow could hardly convince herself of what she'd seen on that rooftop. Even at the tender age of fifteen, she had been trained to observe, to pick out details that nobody else saw. But when she recalled the last she saw of her target on the cold rooftop in Khabarovsk, the only details she could call to mind were a glint of metal, two red eyes, and a rush of wind. Then the target was gone.

Natalia rode her stolen motorbike to the extraction point that night, mind reeling, unaware that she was one of many operatives going home with a story they couldn't explain.

 

* * *

 

January 1st, 2000 ( _13 Years Old_ )  
Bern, Switzerland

The Wyvern stood in the corner of the raging New Year's party, wearing a pair of white shutter shades and a black dress. This wasn't the kind of mission where she had to insert herself into the middle of the party, so she stuck to the edges, sipping on a vodka tonic that wouldn't affect her in the slightest, smiling away advances from men who clearly thought she was much older than her thirteen years. She knew she didn't look as young as she was, with her height, makeup, and bearing. The purpose of the shutter-shades was partly to hide her youth (though the very well-forged I.D. had mostly taken care of that), and partly so her target wouldn't notice her surveillance.

She'd been shadowing the prominent scientist all night, waiting for him to leave. HYDRA hadn't gotten any intel on how the man planned to depart, or where he was going, so she had to follow him to get him alone. He'd mingled with the other scientists over the night, and she once thought she'd lost him when he was speaking to the conference's guest speaker, but she'd found him again by the bar.

Now, finally, it appeared he was getting ready to leave. The ball had dropped, it was the new year, time to go. She slipped out of her corner, keeping the target in the corner of her eye, and shadowed him out of the building. She shouldered past a limping man with long blonde hair and wire glasses and retrieved her duffle pack from where she'd stashed it in a bush outside the building.

The target was getting into a nondescript black car. He was alone: all the better. The Wyvern ducked into the shadows beside the building, shucked off her jacket, kicked her shoes away and pulled her folded wings from the duffle bag. It was a lot harder to get them on by herself, but she had to keep up with the target. As she reached and pulled, trying to get the wings into their moorings, she caught a snatch of conversation from a pair of women leaving the building:

"… can't  _believe_ we saw Tony Stark, he's so hot, and…" their words drifted away.

The Wyvern froze in the act of putting on her left wing. That  _name_. It was important, she knew it – was it relevant to the target? Was he… the Wyvern's head throbbed, a sharp ache behind her eyes, and she pressed her forehead against the wall.

 _The mission_ , came a voice that sounded very like the Project Leader.  _The mission the mission the mission._

As if sensing her malfunction, her earpiece crackled: "Wyvern, report."

The Wyvern gritted her teeth, pressed her left wing into its mooring and then swung around. There – the target's car, peeling out of the parking lot.

"Tailing target's vehicle now," she murmured into the earpiece. The Wyvern looked around, pulled on her goggles and then jetted into the night sky. It was a freezing night, especially since she had on a backless dress instead of her combat suit, but the Wyvern set it all aside. She soared above the target's car, waiting for a moment to strike. She was an invisible weapon in the sky, wings outstretched. Her heel-spurs were already extended, a glinting barb trailing behind her.

But she couldn't quite set aside that  _name._ Why was it important?

Finally, the target's car pulled onto a dark stretch of road with no other cars around. The Wyvern swooped, sinking her heel spurs into the roof of the car and clinging to the roof as the target panicked and screeched to a halt. She leapt from the roof, threw the target's door open and kicked her heel spur through his throat. He died in seconds.

She knew a little bit about why he had to die – he was a prominent scientist who was looking a little too closely into HYDRA interests. She didn't need to know, but the information had been a part of a cyber attack she'd orchestrated a month ago, and her handlers hadn't wiped it away.

Target eliminated, the Wyvern pushed the car to the edge of the road and off the edge, sending it tumbling down a rocky hillside into a near-frozen river. She watched the car sink into the crystalline water, then spread her wings and took off, spiralling into the night sky.

"Target eliminated," she told her handlers through the earpiece. "Inbound to extraction point."

But that  _name_ …

At her debrief, the Project Leader asked if she had recognised anyone, or been recognised. The Wyvern was concerned – could an enemy of HYDRA have made her? She said no.

She considered telling him about the name she'd heard, but she had checked it out and it was irrelevant to the mission. She held her tongue.

The name was lost when she was wiped that afternoon.

 

* * *

 

After the conference at Bern the Wyvern spent the rest of the year meddling with US politics for HYDRA. As she worked, flying out on missions and toiling over computer screens at the Québec facility, the Project Leader watched over his Wyvern. He was pleased that she was proving such a powerful weapon for HYDRA, and yet… she had more masters than just him, now. Not that he minded, but it was he who had put in years of effort to forge the blade.

And he couldn't shake the thought that there was one more test she had yet to pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the Natasha part ended up so weird and creepy – I initially started writing with the adult Natasha in mind, before I remembered she'd only be 15 here. I was going to change it, but then I realized that the Red Room wouldn't care.
> 
> Again, I hope everyone's got a good picture in their mind of the Wyvern's enhancements, and her wings! If you're having trouble, googling "bat wings" or "dragon wings" should offer some visual support. See you in a few days!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the story hasn't seemed too slow so far, I wanted to really establish the Wyvern as her own character before we get into more canon events. But have no fear, she won't be a kiddo forever and from here on out there'll be a lot more of the Winter Soldier!
> 
> Also, another content warning for attempted non-con.

February, 2001  _(14 Years Old_ _)_  
HYDRA Facility, Québec

"Hey!"

The hissed whisper sent the Wyvern leaping from her bed, instantly awake, and she dropped into a fighting stance to face her attacker.

Her attacker, who was… Marino. The weedy scientist had backed into the corner at the Wyvern's whirlwind of movement, his hands up. "Whoa!" he whispered, his breath short. "Just me!"

The Wyvern hesitantly straightened, lowering her arms and wings. She slept most nights with the wings now – the Project Leader encouraged her being "the Wyvern" at all times, and she was better able to defend herself. It also meant that she occasionally cut herself in her sleep.

The Wyvern silently watched Marino as he pulled himself out of the corner. She'd been woken in the middle of the night for missions before, but never by the scientists. She waited for an order.

"Come with me," Marino hissed, pulling the door open and ushering her into the corridor. The Wyvern followed, though she kept Marino in the corner of her vision.

She had learned to be wary. A few months ago a soldier with a curved scar under his left eye had approached her in an empty corridor on her way back from a mission. He had ordered her to accompany him to his room. Once she'd realized his aim the Wyvern snapped his neck, and calmly explained the situation to the Project Leader when he stopped short at the sight of the Wyvern dragging a limp corpse through the facility's tunnels. He had allowed her to toss the man's weighted corpse into the ocean. Despite the multiple wipes the Wyvern had been through since then, the memory remained – she supposed they wanted her to remember.

Marino didn't seem the type, however. He wasn't looking at her body, but at the tunnel around them, checking for people.

"Come on," he whispered, beckoning to her as he jogged down a tunnel that led to the elevator to the launchpad. "I'm getting you out of here."

The Wyvern had been programmed to follow all orders from HYDRA operatives without question, but it was getting very hard to not question these ones. All the same, she followed silently; padding bare-footed in her under-armor jump suit. She wore it to bed, as they'd stopped giving her non-combatant clothes years ago. She stepped on the balls of her feet, to avoid tapping her metal heels against the concrete ground.

On the elevator to the launchpad, the Wyvern stared straight ahead while observing Marino from the corner of her eye. He was fully dressed in jeans and a jacket, and had a bag pulled over his shoulder. He was fidgeting, shifting his weight from foot to foot and biting his lip. Was he going on the mission with her?

Finally, he spoke: "I've got a little girl about your age," he murmured. "Haven't seen her in seven years, but… she's a year older than you. When they brought me here, Peters said you weren't a child, you were a weapon." Marino shook his head. "It was easier to believe that, but I've  _seen_ you remember. You had a family, once, didn't you?"

The Wyvern didn't know how to respond. Families were… social units that targets were a part of. Weaknesses. Weapons didn't have families.

Seeing her furrowed brow, Marino sighed. "They take it all away from you, don't they? I might still be with my daughter, if I hadn't worked out how to make Adamantium. Of course, I doubt HYDRA offered you a whole bunch of money to abandon your family and join them. I wonder how they got you."

A moment later, Marino broke the silence again. "I heard Peters say that they're thinking of… of doing it all over again. The kids, the procedures… but it won't work, not without the serum, and I can't… I can't do it anymore." His voice was low, and broken. He sounded like a target.

The elevator reached the room below the launch pad, and the Wyvern followed Marino into the room and up the stairs to the cold air above. It was a blustery night, the wind blowing the ocean spray up over the cliff and into their faces.

Marino shifted the bag on his shoulder. "Go on, you need to go."

The Wyvern clenched her fists by her sides. "Go… where?"

"Away from here!" he said, flapping his hands at her. The Wyvern took a step back. "Fly away, get away from them."

The Wyvern's hair blew in her face. "What's my mission?"

Marino stopped flapping at her, and sighed. "To be  _free_ ," he told her, his eyes earnest behind his enormous round glasses.

The Wyvern considered this.  _Free_  was something that HYDRA was trying to take away. That was the mission. How could she  _be free_ , if her mission was the opposite?

She was still considering this, motionless on the launchpad while Marino watched her, when the hatch to the staircase opened. Marino recoiled, gasping, as the Project Leader, Chief Scientist Sanders and ten soldiers climbed out onto the launchpad. The Project Leader, for the first time the Wyvern could recall, wasn't wearing a black suit. He had on long, flannel pajamas, and a look of stormy fury clouded his face.

"Where are you off to at this time of the night, Marino?"

The scientist seemed to have folded in on himself. His face was grey. The Wyvern blinked in the ocean spray, waiting for an order.  
Marino clutched at his bag. "You… you can't keep her like this. She's a  _child_!"

The Project Leader's eyes widened, and he looked to the Wyvern. " _That_  hasn't been a child in a long time, Marino. That's a weapon."

There was a long silence.

"I can't… I can't do this anymore," Marino said, his voice breaking. "I can't take children and hurt them, I just can't any more. I never should have been able to, and I'll always regret it." There were tears pouring down his cheeks.

The Project Leader considered Marino for a long moment. Finally, he pulled a gun from his waistband, lifted it, and shot the scientist in the head. The Wyvern watched the blood spray onto the damp launchpad.

"Well," the Project Leader said, handing his gun to a nearby soldier. "It seems we won't be experimenting with Adamantium any more." He sounded truly disappointed. "Come, Wyvern."

She complied. Even as she sat in the chair, waiting to be wiped, she considered what Marino had said.  _You had a family, once, didn't you?_ He had sounded so sure.

But then the metal plates connected, and Marino and all thoughts of families were gone.

 

* * *

 

November, 2001  _(15 Years Old_ )  
HYDRA Facility, Siberia

The Wyvern glided through the frozen Siberian sky behind the Project Leader's helicopter, looking down at the endless terrain of rock and ice.

 _I want you to make an entrance_ , the Project Leader had said. She was dressed in her combat suit, which kept her mostly warm, but cold seeped in through the metal moorings in her back, forming a bone-deep icy ache in her spine.

But her mind wasn't occupied by the cold. Instead, she was thinking about a file the Project Leader had made her read before they left for the Siberian facility.  _Projekt: Zimniy Soldat_. [ _Project: Winter Soldier_.]

 _This is your opponent,_ had been the first thing the Project Leader said after reciting her trigger words.  _Read this, so you can defeat him with your mind as well as your body._

She had furrowed her brow at the picture on the front of the file: a man with long hair and closed eyes, his face frozen.  _You faced him five years ago_ , the Project Leader explained.  _You failed. You will not fail now._

She didn't know what he expected her to do with the information. The file was mostly redacted. But she had studiously read about his cybernetic arm, his enhanced strength, his unparalleled sniper skills. The file didn't list any particular weaknesses or things she might say to distract him. It seemed, from the section about the Memory Suppression Machine, that he was an opponent much like herself: empty of ego and weakness, with only the mission left behind.

But her eyes had caught on a section early in the file, that seemed to be about asset attainment. It was entirely redacted, but her keen eyes noticed flaws in the black marker lines –  _Barnes_ , she made out. There were other words missed, words like  _ravine_ and  _Soviet_ , but  _Barnes_ seemed special. She had flipped the file closed, considering the word.

 _Barnes,_ she thought, as she hung in the cloud cover, waiting for the helicopter to land at the Siberian bunker. It landed, and a group of men in green uniforms emerged from the rock.  _Make an entrance._

The Wyvern complied. She plunged from the cloud cover like a stone, easily slicing through the cold air before she pulled up at the last second, blasting her audience with a wall of churning wind and the whine of her engines. She landed lightly on her feet, wings out, and looked to the Project Leader. He gave her a minute nod.

A man in a green Russian Armed Forces uniform, wearing a red Colonel's hat, eyed the Wyvern with something like horror. " _Itak, eto monstr, kotoryy srazhalsya s bitvami HYDRA. Chto vy s ney sdelali?_ " [" _So, this is the monster who has been fighting HYDRA's battles. What did you do to her?_ "]

The Project Leader smiled, adjusting his heavy coat. "We made her superior, Karpov."

The Wyvern powered down her engines and folded the wings into her body. The residual warmth from the engines eased some of the frozen ache in her back.

Karpov was now looking at the Wyvern with a curled lip. She'd seen that look before: disgust. The man to his left, who was bald even in the bitter cold, wore the same expression as he beheld the Wyvern.

"She will be wearing… those?" Karpov asked, his accent thick.

"They are a part of her," the Project Leader said, cocking an eyebrow. "As your  _Soldat_ 's arm is a part of him."

"Do not compare this…  _merzost'_ [ _abomination_ ] to the asset."

"Oh, I'm sure today will prove that there is no comparison needed." The Project Leader did not seem disturbed by the glares from Karpov and the bald man.

The descent into the bunker was familiar to the Wyvern. She supposed it must be, if she had faced this  _Soldat_ before. The cold concrete walls were familiar, the hanging lights, the squashed elevator. And a chill of familiarity ran down her spine as she saw the blank-faced man with the metal arm, waiting for her in the cage.

She walked into the cage without having to be told, not removing her eyes from the Soldier. The Project Leader and Karpov were still bickering, exchanging rapidly more grievous insults.

"I'm sure you've noticed that the Director has approved the Wyvern's more comprehensive role in HYDRA's missions," the Project Leader said lightly.

"We noticed," Karpov spat. "But the  _Soldat_ remains HYDRA's fist, instead of a  _suka_ [ _bitch_ ] one sends to do errands."

"Well she's clearly achieved more than your frozen serum recipients, and the unfortunate Borya here."

The Wyvern tuned them out, instead analysing her opponent. The technicians at the Québec facility had said that she had almost stopped growing. She was about a head shorter than the Soldier, but he was much larger than her, his imposing bulk and heavy armour posing a challenge. She eyed the cybernetic arm, recalling the stats she had read about its strength and manoeuvrability.

The Soldier mimicked her stance: feet spread, arms apart, casually neutral. Looking into his blank gaze was shockingly familiar – for a moment she had double vision of seeing this man, exactly as he was now, when she was much smaller. She wanted to shake her head, to push away the vision, but she couldn't move. She was waiting for an order.

The air around the cage was prickling with tension, while Karpov and the Project Leader continued to taunt each another and the soldiers of both groups eyed each other warily. But inside the cage, the air was frozen. The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier didn't move, barely even breathed, waiting for their orders.

Finally, Karpov seemed to have enough. " _Soldat! Sokrushit' yeye._ " [" _Soldier! Crush her._ "]

The Project Leader didn't have time to issue an order to the Wyvern before the Soldier was upon her, throwing a metal-armed punch at her face. But she was programmed to defend herself. She threw up her hands and caught the punch, though it sent her sliding back on the concrete floor. The Soldier's eyes flicked to her face, widening, and she pressed back against him, using his arm to swing her feet up and slam her heels toward his stomach. He twisted aside, dodging the lethal  _snick_ of the Adamantium spurs as they jabbed out of her heels, and tossed the Wyvern to the ground. She rolled, retracting her heel spurs, before rising into a crouch and snapping her wings out, baring the deadly Adamantium spines.

Normally the Wyvern's targets were startled by the sight of her black metal wings, and she could use the few seconds of hesitation to leap toward them and eliminate them. But the Winter Soldier merely adjusted; he pulled a knife from a holster at his back and flung it at the Wyvern. She deflected it with a snap of her left wing, but the movement obscured the Soldier from her view – in a moment he had descended on her, driving his knee toward her face. She threw herself to the side, snapping out her heel spurs and spinning them toward the Soldier, who dodged them in his turn. They both regained their feet and circled each other for another second, eyes focused and arms raised.

The taunts outside the cage continued, the atmosphere growing steadily tenser as the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier circled one another. The Soldier pulled out another knife, spinning it over the top of his hand in a flash of light.

The Wyvern, deducing that the Project Leader wanted her to defeat the Winter Soldier as badly as Karpov wanted the Soldier to defeat her, made the next move. She reared her wings, gunning the engines and blasting the Soldier with a gust of exhaust. He stepped backward, his hair flying, and she sprang at him, landing an uppercut to his jaw before he started fighting back. His knife was an extension of his arms, flipping and slicing at her so quickly the Wyvern barely had enough time to register where it was going in order to avoid it. She tried using her wings to beat the Soldier but he was too close to her body, and the cage didn't offer the right terrain for her to use the wings to her full advantage. They exchanged blows for a few more moments before she finally managed to seize his metal wrist and twist it behind him, straining with all her enhanced strength to keep him on his knees. The knife clattered to the ground.

She sensed the tension outside of the cage spike when she gained the advantage over the Soldier, until he managed to pull yet  _another_ knife from his combat suit and drag it along the exposed carbon fiber of her wing. Flinching, the Wyvern loosened her grip for a fraction of a second. The Soldier spun, seized the arm she'd pinned him with and crushed her wrist in his metal grip.

The Wyvern did not scream. There was a knife lodged in the joint of her left wing and the bones of her arm were grinding together, but she had fought through worse. She sliced the spikes of her undamaged wing at the Soldier, giving herself some space, and re-centered herself.

In seconds they were together again, throwing fists, elbows, and knees into each other's bodies. The Wyvern was only aware of the flurry of limbs, the sharp blooms of pain across her body, and the Soldier's narrowed grey eyes, dead even in the heat of the fight.

The Soldier tried to rip her wing off, but the Adamantium held and the Wyvern broke the Soldier's nose with her elbow. She followed it up by kicking her heel spur into his calf – the barb slid into his flesh, knocking the Soldier onto his back with a pained grunt. Heart pounding, the Wyvern threw her weight onto his body, pinning his arms by covering them with the weight of her wings and thrusting the spikes into the concrete floor. Crouched over his body, the Wyvern gripped the Soldier's neck with her right, uninjured hand and squeezed.

His face was screwed up with the effort of trying to throw her off, but one of his legs was impaled to the floor by her heel spur, his arms were pinned by her wings, and her Adamantium-reinforced body was centered over his chest. His right leg kicked helplessly, trying to find some purchase to put her off balance. The Wyvern shuddered with the effort of pushing back against him, but her entire focus was on his face and her hand around his neck. The carbon fiber of her right wing started to crumple against the strength of his cybernetic arm.

He gritted his teeth, groaning as his face started to go red. The Wyvern, eyes wild, watched it happen with fascination.

The anger started to creep in, and her fingernails pressed into the Soldier's flesh. He still stubbornly fought, throwing his knee into her hip, jostling her slightly.

Fire and tears bloomed behind her eyes.

"You're my mission," she hissed, under her breath so only he could hear. She saw his eyes widen, and knew she hadn't imagined the flash of recognition there. He stopped struggling, his lips starting to go purple.

She was vaguely aware of shouting outside the cage:

"… tell her to  _stop_!" Someone was shouting – but not her handler. It wasn't an order, so she could  _do this._ She could carry out her mission. She squeezed harder, feeling the tendons in the Soldier's neck flex under her hand. His eyes were fixed on her face, flickering with an unreadable emotion.

" _Ty ne smozhesh' eto sdelat'! Ostanovite yeye!_ " [" _You can't do this! Stop her!_ "] Karpov was shouting.

She was so  _close_ , just a few seconds more…

Suddenly, thunder echoed in the enclosed space: a gunshot. The Wyvern didn't falter, but then Project Leader cried "Wyvern, defend me!"

The Wyvern took in a shaky breath, her hand convulsing on the Soldier's throat.  _Just a moment more_ -

"Wyvern!"

With a frustrated cry she sprang from the Soldier, and turned to the Project Leader's voice.

The room had devolved into mayhem. Karpov must have fired the shot, because his gun was smoking as he stalked after the Project Leader. The Project Leader had his own gun out, seeking cover behind a desk against the wall. The rest of the soldiers had turned on each other, pulling out guns and knives and brawling around the cage. Gunshots and screams echoed in the room.

The Wyvern, wings damaged and one arm near-useless, complied. She ran for the unlocked door of the cage and flung it open.  _Defend the Project Leader._ That was the mission, not… not what lay behind her in the cage.

The Wyvern didn't make it. Karpov and Peters both stood from their covers at the same time, and fired. The Project Leader's shot struck Karpov in the right shoulder, knocking him back. The Wyvern had just reached the Project Leader, wings outstretched, when he clutched at the wet stain blooming from the stomach of his dark suit. The Wyvern caught him as he fell, lowering his shoulders to the ground. His face was already draining of color, and his hands scrabbled at his abdomen. The Wyvern didn't know what to do. She was trained to cause death, not to reverse it.

"Wyvern," the Project Leader spluttered, blood seeping from his mouth. His ice-blue eyes, normally so calm and calculating, were filled with panic. "Help me."

But they both knew that the Wyvern had been programmed to recognize an impossible mission. She watched the life slip out of the Project Leader's cold eyes. She removed his bloodstained hands from her combat suit.

Another shot rang out, and fire tore along the Wyvern's ribcage. She hissed through her teeth, standing, and turned around. Colonel Karpov was propped against the bunker wall, his gun shaking in his right hand. His other hand was pressed against the bullet wound in his shoulder.

Karpov's face paled when he saw the Wyvern's focus turn on him. He fired again, gritting his teeth, and cursed when she blocked the shot with her tattered wing.

The Wyvern paced toward Karpov slowly, moving through the all-out brawl around her as if she was underwater. She felt unmoored, empty. She had no handler, no mission. Her programming had caught onto the threat to her life that Karpov posed, and that was the only reason she was moving.

" _Pomogi mne, Soldat_!" [" _Help me, Soldier!_ "] shouted Karpov, firing another useless shot at the Wyvern as she stalked toward him.

It wasn't the Soldier that came to help Karpov, however. It was Borya; the Wyvern only just spotted him from the corner of her eye when he leapt at her, and spun around to block the knife strike he aimed at her chest. She fell back under his furious onslaught. He was fast, throwing punches at her face, chest, and injured arm. He landed most of his blows on her wounds, making her groan and flinch back, despite her training. She remembered him now: he was one of the  _Batal'on smerti,_ [ _death squad,_ ] chosen for the serum before the Wyvern had gotten his share. She could see the hatred in his face as he rained blows on her, seeking out her weaknesses and dodging her enhanced limbs. His teeth were bared in a snarl, and his pale eyes were narrowed on her face.

" _Ya ub'yu tebya, suka,_ " [" _I will kill you, bitch,_ "] he spat at her, pushing her back toward the crumpled body of the Project Leader. He spun, kicking at her face and making her stumble back, and in the same move swiped the Project Leader's gun from the ground.

The fury that had been simmering in the Wyvern's chest since she almost killed the Winter Soldier flared. She spun into a roll, dodging Borya's shots, and sprang up to knock the gun out of his hand. He hissed at her strength, clutching his hand, and she used the hesitation to shatter his knee with her Adamantium-reinforced heel. He crumpled to the ground, and she planted her foot on his chest, over his heart.

" _Net, vy ne budete_ ," [" _No, you won't,_ "] she told him, resisting his efforts to throw her off. She activated her heel spur, feeling the blade slice through rib and muscle and pierce Borya's heart. He went slack under her foot.

Wiping blood from the corner of her lip, the Wyvern retracted her heel spur and stepped back. The soldiers were still brawling, though it seemed that the fight had spread from the room. She could hear gunshots echoing throughout the bunker.

The Wyvern was malfunctioning. Her left wrist was mangled, unusable. The carbon fiber of her wings was riddled with rips and bullet holes, and several of the engines had been crushed. There was a bullet wound along her ribcage, and multiple contusions marking her body. Worse, her mind seemed to be malfunctioning as well. The Wyvern was  _feeling:_  anger, confusion, pain. Her head was throbbing.

And the mission… her mission was… She clutched her head, squinting around her, and saw a trail of blood leading from the room. A red hat had been discarded by the door. Something about that seemed significant, so she staggered toward the door, following the splattered blood. It led to a set of stairs, which she climbed with gritted teeth, then through a hangar, and out an open metal door to the swirling snowstorm beyond.

The Wyvern, one wing now dragging on the ground, stumbled outside and shielded her eyes with her uninjured hand, squinting into the snow. There: lights! But she realised the lights were the beacons from a helicopter, one that was already twenty feet in the air. She ran toward it, trying to fire up her engines, but she only made it a few feet before she crashed back into the hard, frozen rock. The helicopter's downdraft pressed her into the snow, and her ears rang with the loud whirring of the propellers. She rolled onto her back, groaning, and watched the helicopter lift away. Tears were spilling from the Wyvern's eyes, and freezing on her cheeks. She was so  _confused._ She had no mission.

She lay bleeding into the snow, watching the helicopter disappear into the white sky.

Once the noise of the helicopter faded away, the Wyvern registered a metal clang from the bunker. She sat up, wincing as her wounds protested, and saw the Soldier. He was leaning against the metal slab door, dark hair blowing in the snowstorm, looking right at her. Blood leaked from the open wound in his left calf, and his face was bruised. There was a red handprint around his throat, already starting to darken.

The Wyvern remembered. Or… she remembered some of it. Enough to know that  _he is my mission_ , and that there was no one standing in her way. She was strong now.

She pulled herself out of the snow and strode toward the Soldier with shaking hands. He stepped out from the doorway and planted his feet in the snow. The wind was shrieking and snatching at their clothes, their hair, but the Wyvern could see the Soldier's eyes. They weren't blank. He was looking at her,  _seeing her_ , and he knew she was going to kill him.

He didn't raise his arms when she leapt at him, knocking him back against the black rock. He just toppled like a felled tree, and watched her.

The Wyvern snarled and raised her fist over her shoulder, telegraphing her move. He saw it, an idiot would have seen it, but he made no move to stop her. She threw her fist into his face, screaming, and relished the sound his head made when it slammed into the rock behind him. She kept punching, and the sight of his blood brought back memories, terrible memories, of when she was weak and scared. She still felt scared, even though she was strong now.

The Wyvern didn't know what she was doing. She punched, and screamed, but she still wasn't  _killing him._ She wanted to, but her body didn't seem to remember how.  _He's my mission._ Finally she reared her wings back, baring the Adamantium spikes, ready to plunge them into the Soldier's body. But the sight of him, lying in the snow with his beaten and bloody face, made her pause. He closed his eyes, and she remembered the picture of him on the file. His lips were purple, and his eyelashes were frozen.

_Barnes._

The breath gusted out of the Wyvern's chest, crystallizing in the winter air.

Before she could consider her next move, soldiers spilled out of the bunker.

" _Verre_!" [" _Glass!_ "] one of them cried, and the Wyvern sobbed. " _Transmission! Affamé!_ " [" _Transmission! Starving!_ "]

As the soldier in the white uniform called her words, another in a green uniform shouted Russian words that must have belonged to the Soldier: " _Zhelaniye, rzhavyy, semnadtstat'!_ " [" _Longing, rusted, seventeen!_ "]

The soldiers shouted over one another, a chaotic mess of trigger words that washed over the assets as they lay in the snow. The Winter Soldier's eyes opened when he heard his words, and he met the Wyvern's gaze. One of his eyes was half-closed with a bruise, but the Wyvern could  _see_  the man inside the Soldier as she looked into his pale blue-grey eyes. This was not the weapon who'd fought her in the cage. The emotion in his eyes echoed her own; sad and tired and losing control. She didn't look away, until:

" _Gruzovoy vagon!_ " [" _Freight car!_ "]

" _Quatre-vingts_!" [" _Eighty!_ "]

As one, the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier's eyes glazed over and their bodies loosened, waiting for an order.

" _Soldat_?" [" _Soldier_?"]

"Wyvern?"

"Ready to comply," they said in unison.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier stood on opposite sides of the bunker's enormous silo-like chamber. There was a memory suppression chair set in the middle, and four unlit cryo-chambers. The Wyvern noted that there was a person in each of the cryo-chambers, their vitals monitored by linked up computers. She kept an eye on everyone in the room, but didn't move a muscle. Her orders were to stand and wait, so she complied. She estimated she had at least seven hours before her body could no longer sustain her many injuries and collapsed. She estimated that the Winter Soldier had less time than that – he was leaning dangerously to the side, one half of his face entirely swollen into a bruise. The Wyvern did not wonder about the Soldier's injuries. He wasn't a part of her mission.

After four hours, footsteps rang out from the chamber's entrance. A well-dressed man with strawberry blonde hair and a lined face strode into the chamber, flanked by seventeen guards. He came to a halt just inside the entrance and took in the scene before him. His eyes flickered from the bruised Winter Soldier to the bloodied Wyvern, and then around at the varied injured guards who were shooting each other uncomfortable looks.

"Well," the man said. "This is one hell of a mess."

"Director," said Chief Scientist Sanders, who was pressing gauze to a bullet wound on her thigh, "Colonel Karpov initiated an unprovoked-"

The Director glanced at one of his guards. "Shoot her."

The man whipped out his gun and fired at the Chief Scientist, putting a scarlet hole between her eyes. Sanders's blood misted on the Wyvern's face, but the Wyvern didn't flinch.

The Director turned to a junior-looking soldier in green uniform. "You. Report."

The soldier blanched, but snapped his heels together and spoke. "The assets were fighting sir, to see which was the superior weapon."

A muscle jumped in the Director's jaw. "And?"

"And, sir… Colonel Karpov and Project Leader Peters started shooting at each other. I… I think Karpov wanted the Wyvern to stop, but Peters wouldn't give the order, a-and Peters got shot, but the Colonel got away, sir." It all came out in a rush, the soldier's voice high and shaking.

The Director folded his hands behind his back and started pacing. "How did the Colonel get away?"

"I… I didn't see-"

"Helicopter, Director," said another soldier, a little more senior. His face was stony. "There's a helicopter missing. And the Winter Soldier book."

The Director looked up, still pacing back and forth, and cocked an eyebrow. "He has the book?"

"Yes, sir."

The Director ran a hand over his face. "Can the Soldier still be controlled?"

"Yes, sir. We have the trigger words."

Nodding, the Director then ran his eyes over the Wyvern. He turned to a soldier in a white uniform, one of Peters' men. "And the Wyvern?"

"We have her words too, sir."

The Director stopped pacing and put his hands on his hips. He looked over the survivors of the fight, a mix of bloody HYDRA operatives from Karpov and Peters' factions, and the two assets. The muscle in his jaw was still jumping.

"The competition was useful," he eventually said, the force of his tone making a few of the soldiers step back. "It was important for the progression of the weapons. It was Peters' pride, and Karpov's petty jealousy, that did this. HYDRA is meant to be more than this." He shook his head, glancing around the room. "HYDRA's goals are growing closer. We need to use our weapons against our enemies, not against each other." He looked from the Wyvern to the Winter Soldier. "We're done here. Put him on ice and ship him to the US. He will remain useful, but the weapon we'll need most in the coming years is a refined one. A subtle knife." His eyes flicked over the Wyvern's shoulders, over her wings. "Wings or no, she's a formidable instrument. Wipe her and put her back together, and start her off in Yemen."

The last the Wyvern saw of the Winter Soldier was the back of his shaggy head as he was marched out of the room, heading for his cryo-chamber. But then there was the chair, and the sparking metal plates, and it was all wiped away.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for your lovely comments!
> 
> Content warning because there is dumb early 2000s text-speak in this chapter. Sorry in advance.

After the Project Leader's death, the Wyvern became HYDRA's weapon in earnest. She was no longer based in any particular facility – instead, HYDRA moved her around the world to wherever she was needed. She didn't have one particular handler, either. She worked alone and in teams, usually given missions straight from the Director, sometimes posted to HYDRA bases requesting backup. But they never let her out in the world by herself unless she was on mission: the Wyvern belonged to HYDRA, and they had to keep up the constant cycle of memory suppression and trigger words to ensure their weapon remained theirs.

The Wyvern did whatever HYDRA needed. She assassinated, gathered intelligence, shaped politics and people to bring more chaos to the world. She also guarded prominent members of HYDRA when needed, passed on secret communications, programmed software, broke codes, and trained soldiers. She was rarely seen without her wings and uniform, appearing more monster than mortal to HYDRA and enemies alike.

The Wyvern didn't keep up the output of designs and engineering advancements that she had while at the Québec facility – no one was telling her to make things, so she didn't. The deaths of Peters, Sanders and Marino meant that steady stream of experimentation and enhancement also ceased.

The Wyvern did, however, fashion herself a pair of combat gauntlets with razor barbs on the fingertips, so her hands were just as deadly as the rest of her. But she found some comfort in being able to take the gauntlets off at the end of a mission – the heel spurs and Adamantium spine were not so temporary. The gauntlets weren't made of Adamantium, but they did the job of helping her to grip things and cut through flesh. The Wyvern could have made them out of Adamantium, but the Project Leader had informed HYDRA that the secret of the metal had died with Marino in 2001. The Wyvern was not asked if she knew how to create Adamantium, so she never felt it necessary to correct them.

 

* * *

 

August, 2004  _(18 Years Old)_  
Moscow, Russia

Ivan Vanko sat on the stoop outside his father's ramshackle flat, nursing a bottle of cheap vodka and periodically flicking his lank, greasy hair out in his face. He stared at a hole in the plaster, listening to his father cough and rattle around the flat.

His father was weakening by the year, but seemed to have found a new strength when Ivan came home from Kopeisk prison: just enough strength to loudly express his displeasure in his failure of a son.

Ivan knocked his head back against the wall and felt some of the plaster crumble away. Surely he hadn't survived fifteen years in that  _gadkoye pomeshcheniye_  [ _hellhole_ ] for this: avoiding his father in their tiny flat and tracking down enough booze to get him through the day.

After what felt like hours of silent drinking, Ivan lifted his head, his prison-born instincts kicking in. He set down the vodka. What was it – had he heard something? He listened for a moment more, then realised what the problem was. He  _couldn't_ hear anything. His father had stopped banging away at machinery and trying to hack the winter out of his lungs.

Ivan got to his feet and stepped back into the flat. Dim light peeked through the thin curtains, revealing peeling wallpaper and piles of junk in his father's dingy workshop.

" _Otets_?" [" _Father?_ "] He called.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the next room. Ivan stepped through the stacks of machinery and newspapers, and then stopped dead at what he saw.

In the next room, where his father's workshop extended into the kitchen, were two strangers. One was a younger man in a long, well-made brown trench coat and black bowler hat. He was leaning against the kitchen counter with his hands folded in front of him. When Ivan walked in, this man scrutinised him with dark, dispassionate eyes. The other stranger was… some kind of demon. A demon dressed in black and grey, with metal wings. A black cowl covered the demon's whole head, and she looked up at Ivan with glinting red eyes.

" _Spasi nas_ ," ["S _ave us,_ "] Ivan swore, staring at the demon. It – she – was crouched over his father, who had fallen to the ground.

The well-dressed young man smirked. "Oh, there'll be no one to save you, Ivan. Now, Anton, give me the formula and I won't tell the Wyvern to feed you your own tongue."

The demon – the Wyvern – cocked her head, her red eyes glaring at his father. Ivan shook his head, and the details became a little clearer. Those weren't her eyes, those were goggles. And the wings – he could see the machinery, the joints in the limbs.

" _Ty ostavish' yego!_ " [" _You leave him be!_ "] Ivan cried, throwing himself at the demon. He'd been drinking vodka for most of the morning, but there was a reason he'd survived Kopeisk: he was bigger and meaner than any other man in there. He'd survived quick and brutal scuffles, full-scale prison riots, and men with makeshift knives in the night.

But in his father's kitchen that morning, one moment he was upright and charging, and the next he was flat on his back, gasping for air, with the point of a long, thin blade pressed to his neck. Even with his head pressed into his father's grimy kitchen floor Ivan could appreciate the fineness of the blade, and wondered how it had appeared from the heel of the demon's foot. He held himself still, trying not to swallow and nick himself on the blade.

" _Pozhaluysta,_ " [" _Please._ "]His father gasped, pulling himself up by the kitchen bench. " _Ne nado._ " [" _Don't._ "]

The well-dressed man pursed his mouth, looking from Ivan on the ground, to his father. "The formula, Anton. I won't ask again. The Wyvern's leg might get tired."

The Wyvern didn't waver, her red goggles fixed on Ivan's scarred, dirty face. He glared back up at her.

"Fine," Anton wheezed, his accent heavy. "Fine. In here."

The strange man cocked his head. "Wyvern, if Anton here tries anything funny, step on Ivan's throat for me."

Anton shuffled into the main room, followed by the stranger, and the Wyvern didn't move a muscle. They stayed frozen together; Ivan flat against the ground, she with her heel spur poised over his throat.

" _Ty suka demona,_ " [" _You demon bitch,_ "] Ivan said, his hands fisting at his sides, " _Ya prichinyu tebe bol'._ " [" _I will hurt you._ "] He spat at her, catching the bottom of her foot. The Wyvern didn't move.

"Alright, Wyvern," the man called from the main room, after a minute. "We'll be off now."

The blade vanished into the Wyvern's heel with a  _snick_ , and she stepped right over Ivan's face to pace into the main room. He staggered to his feet and looked around wildly for his father. Anton was propped up against the newspapered wall of the flat, looking very small in his threadbare clothes.

The strange man spoke: "Thank you, Anton, for your cooperation. The Wyvern here will be keeping an eye on you and your delightful son, so don't go spreading any stories."

Ivan listened to the man, but watched the Wyvern: she was looking at the wall over his father's desk. The wall was covered in old newspapers about his father's ex business partner, Howard Stark, with some recent spreads about his son. Ivan hated it, hated how the betrayal had led his father to this dirty, junk-filled hovel, with nothing but sickness and a worthless son as reward for his hard work. He hated these people, thinking they could bully his father for whatever they wanted.

The strange man adjusted his bowler hat, then headed for the door. "Cheerio, Anton," he called on his way out.

The Wyvern didn't move. She was still staring at his father's desk. Ivan's eyes flickered to the knife block in the kitchen.

"Wyvern!" called the stranger, in the tone men used to call wayward dogs.

The Wyvern cocked her head, turned on her heel and stalked out of the flat after the man. She didn't look back.

Giving up on the demon, Ivan rushed to support his father. " _Otets, ty v poryadke?_ " [" _Father, are you alright?_ "]

His father slumped against the wall, his face crumpling. Tears spilled down the sides of his cheeks. " _Ya proval_ ," [" _I'm a failure,_ "] he wailed, knocking away Ivan's hands so he could slip to the ground. " _Ya proval_.  _Ya podvel vas_." [" _I'm a failure. I failed you._ "]

Ivan tried to help his father up, but the man just beat at Ivan's hands until he stepped away.

" _Ostav' menya._ " [" _Leave me._ "]

Ivan stepped away from his weeping, hunched father, and returned to the stoop outside the flat. His vodka was where he had left it. He slid down the wall, picked up the bottle, and took a long swig.

 

* * *

 

April 22nd, 2005 ( _18 Years Old_ )  
Culver University, Virginia

It was a warm night, and the reporter standing under the shadowy arches of Culver University's physics building was starting to wish she'd agreed to go to the bar with her friends, instead of following up on a dodgy lead. But Ellen was only in her second year at the newspaper, desperate to prove herself, and an old boyfriend's friend had promised her a story.

So here she was at nine-thirty on a Friday night, cooling her heels on the steps of a science building, waiting for a lead who was supposed to show up at nine.

Rolling her eyes, Ellen pulled out her flip-phone and scrolled through her recent messages. The old boyfriend's friend was called Bill, and he apparently worked in the science lab that had been damaged last weekend. It had been an exciting day for the college-town newspaper, and her editor had sent three reporters over to cover the story. Ellen hadn't been one of them.

It turned out that the lab was involved with radiation experiments, and there'd been a small explosion, hence the military crawling all over the university. A couple of scientists had died. But after a five-minute panic about a radiation leak, the Culver nerds had waved a Geiger counter under the reporters' noses and it was all wrapped up.

Bill, however, had somehow got a hold of Ellen's number and sent her a bunch of super paranoid messages, after awkwardly re-introducing himself:

_culver lab thing NOT what they say it is. military covering it up. can't let dr banner go down 4 this, i want to speak 4 him but needs 2 b secret._

_physics blding steps, 9pm._

Ellen had followed up with her editor – there  _was_ a Doctor Banner in the Physics Faculty, but according to the university he'd been on a leave of absence for weeks.

Ellen waited another fifteen minutes then rolled her eyes, put her phone away and left the building.

"Screw you, Bill," she muttered, heading for the bar. "Your friend's a douchebag anyway."

On the other side of town, police were putting up tape around a gruesome car accident outside an apartment building. Later, the Medical Examiner found that lab assistant Bill Wilkins, 24, had been heavily intoxicated when he walked into traffic at 8:45pm on a Friday night, and ruled his death an accident. Ellen the reporter glanced at the short story her colleague wrote up on the accident the next day, but didn't think to connect it with her douchebag lead. Three weeks later, Bruce Banner transformed into the Hulk while trying to flee into Canada, and injured multiple State Troopers.

The Wyvern was wiped after her mission. Her handlers decided not to assign her to the Chase of Bruce Banner, as the US military seemed to be handling it. When the military got the Hulk, HYDRA would too.

 

* * *

 

October, 2006  _(20 Years Old)_  
Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

The Wyvern stepped out of the sleek black car parked outside the bank, and looked up at its sandstone pillars and blue dome. She wasn't sure, but she didn't think she'd been to this facility before. She adjusted her sleek pantsuit and shouldered the duffle bag that held her wings, uniform and weapons. She'd been ordered to report dressed as a civilian, to keep the facility's location sensitive, so she had taken on the guise of a young D.C. office worker. She didn't like wearing pumps, because they made extending her heel spurs difficult, but she didn't anticipate finding a fight tonight.

It was a blustery night, and a gust of wind filled with litter and autumn leaves blew against the Wyvern's legs as she paced up the sidewalk. She walked around to the office building next door, let herself in, and then opened a false wall to enter the seemingly abandoned bank.

The Wyvern couldn't remember where she'd been before she was given civilian clothes and put in the black car, but she had no injuries that she could tell. It must have been computer work, then, or a low-risk mission. It didn't matter. She'd been ordered to report to the bank, so she would comply.

The guards in the darkened lobby lifted their guns as she approached, eyes narrowed. "Identify yourself!" the younger one, a woman, called. Her finger was on the trigger of her gun.

"Wyvern."

The guards' eyes went wide, and they both lowered their guns. "We're so sorry, Wyvern," said the older one, adjusting his cap. "We didn't recognize you…"

The Wyvern merely waited. She didn't know why some HYDRA operatives spoke to her as a superior, one who might be cruel or disappointed. She was a weapon, and weapons did not feel.

The guards seemed to realize that she wasn't going to speak. "The Director, uh, is downstairs. The vault." The younger one gestured to the back rooms with her gun.

The Wyvern turned on her heel and followed the directions, leaving the guards wide-eyed and open mouthed in her wake.

"I thought she'd be older," she heard the younger one whisper. "I've been hearing ghost stories about her since I joined."

The Wyvern walked downstairs, and didn't hear what the older guard said in reply.

The hum of machinery directed her the rest of the way, once she'd made her way downstairs. She could hear the pneumatic hiss of a cryo-chamber opening, and the low voices of HYDRA operatives. She came to a halt beside a locked vault just as a door opened at the other end of the corridor. The Director stepped into view, speaking with a tech in a lab coat. He looked greyer and more lined than the last time the Wyvern had seen him, though she could not recall when that was.

The Director looked up and spotted the Wyvern just as she spotted the men behind him – a whole host of guards and techs, two of them supporting a man with a metal arm between them. The man's face was lax, his eyes barely open as his lank hair fell in his face. He wore a lined black jumpsuit that the Wyvern knew – somehow – was designed to monitor a subject's vitals in a cryo-chamber. The man's legs dragged behind him as the guards heaved him up the corridor.

"Wyvern," said the Director. The Wyvern fell into parade rest, holding her duffle bag behind her. "You're early," he said, running an eye over her outfit.

The Wyvern had no response to that. Her punctuality was entirely dependent on the HYDRA transport that had been arranged for her.

The Director knew that the Wyvern wasn't about to make small talk with him, though, so he merely gestured her into the vault when it was opened, revealing a Memory Suppression Machine in the center of the walls lined with lockboxes.

The Wyvern followed, wondering why she was being wiped so soon, until the man with the metal arm was dumped into the chair. The restraints closed around his limbs, both metal and flesh, and a technician put a rubber bit in his mouth. The man's bleary eyes watched the sparking metal arms descend on his face. The scientists monitored the linked computers when the man began to scream.

The Wyvern watched, utterly frozen, from her position by the vault door. She had no orders, so all she could do was watch as the man's face contorted in pain, his hands spasming and his chest heaving. The tendons in his neck bulged, fighting against the electric current, and the whole machine shuddered with his pain.

His cries seemed to rip right into the Wyvern's chest, lodging there like projectiles. A tingle of familiarity went through her – was this what she looked like, when she was in the chair?

When the procedure came to an end, a technician read words from a thin book: ten random Russian words that calmed the man's rapid breathing and brought a mask of blankness over his previously agonized expression. The Wyvern let out a long, slow, breath.

" _Dobroye utro, Soldat._ " [" _Good morning, Soldier._ "]

" _Gotov podchinit'sya_." [" _Ready to comply_."]

The Director cleared his throat. "Soldier, this is the Wyvern. Wyvern, this is the Winter Soldier."

The Wyvern looked at the Soldier, meeting his blank gaze with her own.

"You've met before," the Director said, eyeing them both. Seemingly satisfied with their emptiness, he nodded to a tech, who opened the Soldier's restraints, then handed each of the assets a file. "I've got a mission for the two of you."

 

* * *

 

Later, on the jet out of D.C., the Wyvern reviewed the file in silence. The Soldier sat opposite her, cleaning his weapons. He had four very nice-looking rifles packed into black cases, and he cleaned them with precision. They had a small team with them – a pilot for the jet, and three HYDRA operatives who were there to assist and monitor the assets.

They were being sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assassinate a high-level UN diplomat. It would need to appear to be collateral damage from the hostilities there, but the diplomat was currently heavily guarded by the UN Peacekeeping force, and by military groups from multiple foreign nations. Apparently the Director felt that this mission was important and difficult enough to warrant posting both assets. He had said they'd met before, so the Wyvern supposed they had cooperated on other missions. She could see the use of the Soldier: she was a good shot, but his sniper skills were – apparently – unparalleled. He also apparently had enhanced speed and strength, like her.

But the familiarity of him, of his shining metal arm and his blank face, dug at the Wyvern. The Director had  _said_ they'd met before, so it ought not to bother her, but…

The Winter Soldier looked up, feeling her gaze. She didn't look away. They watched each other for a long moment from across the jet, one set of eyes a pale grey-blue, the other a deep brown, both vacant of emotion.

"Three hours to Kinshasa," called their pilot. Both assets looked away, one to her file and the other to his rifle.

 

* * *

 

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo

The city was burning. There were rebels all over the city, exchanging gunfire and hand-made explosives.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had arrived in Kinshasa two days ago and got straight to work. They'd each infiltrated the separate rebel groups after a rapid reconnaissance and evaluation of the situation. A few angry shouts in one area, a shot fired in another, a Moltov cocktail tossed into the middle of a crowd, and the city went up like a tinder box.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier worked well together – they hardly needed to communicate, sharing only a few words and a look before they were on the same page. But the HYDRA operatives on their team hadn't failed to notice the tension between the two assets, steadily mounting over the days. They watched each other out of the corner of their eyes, like predators eyeing a potential threat. They didn't address each other by their titles, and never needed to get the other's attention: they already had it. Sometimes the Wyvern would stare at the Soldier unblinkingly, as if her gaze could pierce right through the back of his head and into his skull. The Soldier's brow sometimes furrowed when he looked at the Wyvern, as if she were a puzzle he was trying to solve.

But they'd done their job brutally efficiently so far, so the operatives could deal with a little weirdness from HYDRA's deadliest weapons.

The Wyvern was now monitoring the situation from the air. It was almost midnight, and a huge section of the city's power had been cut by one of the rebel groups. The Wyvern had been flying around slicing telephone wires with her wing spikes, to exacerbate the confusion. The eight-lane main highway that cut straight through the CBD was blocked by a pileup of burning cars, and one of the rebel groups occupied a mile stretch of the highway further north. The whole city was shut down, civilians locked in their homes or fleeing as the rebels hunted each other through the streets and buildings. Even from the air, the constant percussion of gunshots, screams and explosions was loud in the Wyvern's ears.

"Target's location?" came the HYDRA pilot's voice over the comms. The pilot was running point on the mission from the cockpit of the jet, hidden in the forest a few miles away. The other three operatives were monitoring the situation from the ground.

The Wyvern swooped over the fires flickering on the highway and landed on a nearby block of apartments. She peered over the edge at the tin-rooved building where the diplomats had taken shelter earlier that day.

"Still in the shelter," she reported, crouched on the edge of the rooftop. "Evacuation vehicles have arrived."

"Holbrook, you're up," said the pilot.

A pillar of fire scorched into the sky a mile down the road, closely followed by a percussive  _boom_. Holbrook was with a main faction of the rebels, and had just taken down a police blockade.

"Rebels incoming," came Holbrook's panting voice.

" _Soldat_?" the pilot asked.

"In position."

At the Soldier's low murmur, the Wyvern's head swiveled to the abandoned office building across the street where she knew he had made his sniper's nest. It had an open view of the street outside the tin-rooved building, and had been clear of civilians since the start of the fighting. The Wyvern pictured him, his rifle propped against the window, patiently waiting for his target to appear. She fought against the wave of  _feeling_ that rose in her chest at the thought of him – it felt like a sickness, threatening to overwhelm her and cause her to react _._ It had been growing over the past two days, the familiarity itching at her and causing a headache to throb behind her eyes.

The Wyvern looked away from the building when she heard the raucous shouting of the rebels as they sprinted down the street. The evacuation vehicles had noticed, too, and the peacekeeping forces hurried their motions. The Wyvern leapt soundlessly from her perch, catching herself in mid-air and gliding over the tin-rooved shelter. She pulled a grenade from her combat suit, armed it, and dropped it just as she passed over the edge of the building. Seconds later, a noisy explosion erupted from the back of the structure. The Wyvern's enhanced ears caught the screams of the diplomats as they rushed away from the explosion, fleeing for the relative safety outside the front door. She gunned her engines and rocketed upwards, flipping over to view the situation.

"Rebel contact in ten seconds," she reported. "Target inbound to street."

The Wyvern hung in the air, gaze focused, watching the diplomats stream out of the building just as Holbrook's rebels flooded the street, waving their guns and shouting about their political leader. Two days of preparations had led to this moment.

"Target sighted," the Winter Soldier said.

Half a second later the Wyvern saw blood spray from the target's neck, coating the diplomats around them and sending the group into an even greater frenzy. The report from the Soldier's rifle shot was lost amidst the clamoring and other gunshots on the street. She lost sight of the target in the press of bodies, so she returned to her perch on the higher apartment building, waiting for confirmation of death.

Finally, Holbrook's voice came through: "Target eliminated."

"Bug out," came the pilot's order.

The Wyvern's muscles tensed, ready to spring from the rooftop and soar into the cover of clouds and smoke, when another bloom of light and roar of noise caught her attention. She turned, clinging to her perch as the shock wave rolled over the top of the apartment building.

A car bomb had gone off at the base of the abandoned office building the Winter Soldier occupied. The Wyvern watched, fascinated, as a whole corner of the building shuddered, cracked, and collapsed to the ground in a plume of dust and sparks.

The city seemed to snap – the rampaging rebels only got angrier, flooding the streets and firing indiscriminately. The HYDRA operation also devolved into noise. The operatives swore at the building collapse, and frantically tried to figure out what to do. They all clamored for the Winter Soldier to  _report, dammit._

The Wyvern remained on her perch, eyeing the exposed offices and sparking wires across the street. There was no word from the Soldier.

Finally, the pilot got a handle on the situation: "Operatives, return to the jet. Wyvern, do a fly-by, find the Soldier."

The Wyvern complied. She soared into the night sky, feeling the heat of the flames below her. The city was so focused in on itself, its own pain, that no one thought to look up. Even if they had, they wouldn't have seen her silhouette jetting across the sky – the stars were obscured by clouds and smoke.

The Wyvern circled the smoking office building twice, inspecting the demolished corner and looking into the undamaged windows. Finally, on her third turn, she caught a glint of shining metal in the rubble. She dipped lower and came to land on a nearby lamppost. The metal groaned under her weight, but held.

The rubble was strewn out across the sidewalk and underneath the lamppost, chunks of concrete and brick mixed with twisted rebar and demolished office equipment.

The Soldier was about half-way up in the rubble, his legs trapped under what looked like a slab of balcony, his hair sweaty and strewn around his face. But the Wyvern's eyes were drawn to his stomach: poking through the Soldier's leather and Kevlar armor was a length of dusty, sharp rebar, glinting scarlet. His flesh hand pressed beside the metal, and blood seeped from the wound.

The Soldier was looking down at his wound, his chest heaving and his eyes wild. His metal arm scrabbled at the rubble around him, looking for purchase. As the Wyvern watched from her perch, the Soldier's eyes went from his wound, to the concrete pinning his legs, then traveled to the top of the lamppost.

Their eyes met. Or rather, the Winter Soldier looked into the narrowed red eyes of the Wyvern, and knew what she was going to do. He clenched his jaw but didn't look away. He didn't even speak.

The Wyvern stared a moment longer at the Soldier as he lay impaled in the rubble. Then she raised her wings, released her grip on the lamppost, and flew into the night sky.

 

* * *

 

"Wyvern, report. Did you find the Soldier?"

There was a pause. The Wyvern clenched her fist, pressing the sharp barbs on her fingertips into her palm. "He was lost in the wreckage."

"Damn. Alright, we'll move out once Holbrook gets back."

 

* * *

 

Holbrook finally arrived at the jet four hours later, his face sweaty and streaked with blood and grime. He'd lost two guns and a knife in his fight out of the city. The pilot took his preliminary report, then started flight checks for their stealth extraction back to the US.

The Wyvern remained in uniform, her face covered and her red eyes fixed on the opposite side of the jet. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her breath was still short. She had disobeyed orders, had  _lied_  to her handler. But that wasn't the only reason for her physical distress.

She'd wanted the Soldier dead, had felt a jolt of bitter satisfaction in her gut at the sight of him impaled in the dust. But she remembered his screams, back at the bank. She remembered other things, too, though she couldn't quite put her finger on them. They made a blinding light pulse in her skull.

She'd wanted this. Hadn't she? The Wyvern's mind was a snowstorm of conflicting missions and forbidden feelings.

Just as the pilot was performing his final flight check, a  _clang_ resounded against the fuselage of the jet. The Wyvern sprang to her feet, gun cocked and ready, and the three operatives were quick to follow. They glanced at each other, and then the Wyvern. She strode to the hatch at the back of the jet, threw it open and swung up her gun to face their attacker.

When she saw who it was, the Wyvern almost reacted. Whether that reaction would have been to fire her gun or to drop it, she wasn't sure.

Standing outside the back of the camouflaged jet, dripping wet and oozing blood from the wound on his stomach, was the Winter Soldier. His brow was pinched in pain, and his eyes flicked up to meet the Wyvern's, grey-blue and – seemingly – blank. But she caught a flicker of emotion – not anger, but something a little deeper. Something like understanding.

"Shit," said Holbrook, lowering his gun. "It's the Soldier!" he called back to the pilot.

"Well get him inside, we're out of here."

The Soldier stumbled into the jet, and the Wyvern closed the hatch behind him. He took his original seat on the other side of the cabin, his flesh hand pressed against the hole in his stomach. He dripped stinking water onto his seat, and his wet hair hung in his eyes: he must have swum across the river.

As the pilot gunned the engines and flew them out of the forest, Holbrook sat by the Winter Soldier.

"Soldier," he said, when they were safely out of range of detection from the ground. "Report."

The Wyvern held her breath.

"The building was blown by the rebels," the Soldier said, through gritted teeth. "I was buried. I got out."

Holbrook let out a  _humph_ , as if surprised at himself for expecting a report more detailed than that, then gestured for Davidson, their medical operative, to attend to the Soldier.

The Wyvern took off her goggles and cowl, finally exposing her face.

While Davidson pressed at the hole that went straight through his torso, the Soldier glanced up at the Wyvern. Between their blank gazes, understanding bloomed. Yes, the Wyvern had left the Soldier to die. No, the Soldier had not told their handlers. Now they had both disobeyed. But what did that leave?

The Wyvern didn't know if she was relieved or if she wanted to leap across the cabin and put her Adamantium-reinforced foot through the Soldier's head. She suspected that he wouldn't try to stop her, and she didn't understand  _why._ The mess of confusion and hatred in her head was exhausting. She didn't understand herself, and she didn't understand the Soldier. She could admit to herself that she had to respect an enemy who could survive having a building exploded beneath his feet.

She dropped her goggles onto the floor of the jet and stalked toward the cockpit. She sat beside the very uncomfortable pilot for the rest of the flight, trying to forget about the Soldier and his blank blue-grey eyes.

 

Back in D.C. she only caught a glimpse of him, already on his way back to the cryo-chamber. He looked over his shoulder as if sensing her gaze. The Wyvern's brow furrowed.

A moment later, he had vanished.

Half an hour later, the Wyvern got her wish and forgot about the Soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's interested, the HYDRA scientist was after Anton Vanko's formula for Nitramene (as seen in the TV show Agent Carter). And yes I did check that April 22nd, 2005 was a Friday, because I’m a huuuuge nerd.
> 
> Keep up the comments!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y’all are ready for a showdown. 
> 
> Content warning for deaths of children.

March, 2009  _(22 Years Old)_  
HYDRA Quinjet, North Atlantic Ocean

The cockpit of the Quinjet was silent, save for the engines whirring and the tapping of the Wyvern’s keyboard. The Winter Soldier piloted the jet, his eyes focused and his flesh and metal hands sure on the controls.

They were alone together for this mission. The Director had given the Wyvern her briefing: the mission was to locate and eliminate a non-combatant target who had fled Tehran three hours previously under the protection of a level 6 combatant. The Wyvern had been provided with a Quinjet, an arsenal of weapons and tech, and the Winter Soldier. The Director had merely told them to work together before leaving them alone on the jet.

Unbeknownst to the assets, this was their second mission together. The Winter Soldier had been woken for a few other missions since the Congo assassination three years prior, and the Wyvern had been in constant service of HYDRA, but they hadn’t crossed paths until now. HYDRA was expanding its interests, working closer to its final goal, and that meant greater use of the assets.

They had location trackers implanted in their cybernetic limbs and were under orders to report back to base every five hours. Other than that, they were alone.

The assets hadn’t spoken to each other since the beginning of the mission. The Winter Soldier had merely taken the controls of the Quinjet and set a course for the eastern Mediterranean, while the Wyvern sat at the Quinjet’s onboard computer and started tracking their targets. The silence stretched between them.

Both assets experienced an odd sense of déjà vu whenever they looked at their partner. This wasn’t unusual – they both knew that all sorts of forgotten memories and past missions haunted the stormy chaos of their minds. Neither asset addressed it, though each sensed the other’s quiet turmoil.

The Wyvern finally stood, carrying a laptop with her into the cockpit. She sat in the co-pilot’s seat, not looking at the Winter Soldier to her left. She sensed him tense minutely.

“I have located the targets,” she murmured. “There was an encoded financial transaction to an ATM on the Ukranian-Russian border. CCTV shows that ATM user was the level 6 combatant, who got into a car with stolen plates and headed east.” She turned the laptop and showed the screengrab of the CCTV to the Soldier: it showed a lithe woman expertly disguised in a brown wig and prosthetic makeup standing beside a car. The target’s head was visible in the passenger seat.

The Wyvern was used to showing her findings to her handlers, but it felt odd proving her worth to the Soldier.

He eyed the CCTV image, then nodded. “The combatant will head east to her extraction point.”

“Extraction point?”

The Soldier glanced away from the cockpit window. His blue-grey eyes were serious, but not quite blank, as he looked at her. “The combatant is extracting the target for S.H.I.E.L.D. They’re meeting her in Slovakia.”

The Wyvern felt an unexpected, improbable rush of anger. “I was not briefed on that.” Her tone was steady, but she knew that the Soldier had sensed her emotions.

Silence fell, almost awkward now. The Wyvern was quickly getting frustrated with the Soldier: with his blank silences, his hidden knowledge, and his uncanny ability to read her. She was used to working with operatives who feared her and used her, acknowledging that she was a weapon and nothing more. The Soldier, whether it was because of his similar programming or his honed insight, seemed to see something more.

Finally, she asked: “How far out from the Ukraine are we?”

“Ten hours,” the Soldier replied, his voice sharp as if reporting to a handler. The Wyvern furrowed her brow.

“If the targets continue east, that will put them just outside Romania. I can track their plates through CCTV, and now that I have their general direction I should be able to trace the combatant’s communication with her handlers.” She left the ‘ _now I know that she_ has _handlers_ ’ unspoken. “Preference for contact?”

The Soldier seemed a little taken aback at being asked for a preference – he looked at her out of the corner of his fractionally widened eyes. But the Wyvern didn’t know how to treat an operative who was like her. She only knew how to communicate with agents, handlers: people with agendas and egos.

“Depending on terrain, I can disable their car long-distance.” His voice was low. “Mission requires minimal contact with the combatant.”

The Wyvern found herself nodding. “Long-range rifle. I’ll run cover.”

The assets glanced at each other once more, partly out of wariness and partly to communicate their agreement, then returned to their tasks. The Wyvern remained in the cockpit for the rest of the flight, using all of her tracking knowledge to keep up with the elusive level six combatant.

 

* * *

 

The conversation in the cockpit seemed to have lessened some of the tension between HYDRA’s weapons, though they were both aware that there was something still hanging between them, dark and painful.

All the same, they continued to speak for the rest of the flight, perhaps a little more than was necessary. Neither of them could give orders to the other, and they each recognized the other’s skills and potential as an opponent. They’d reached a strange sort of truce, speaking only about the mission but simultaneously seeing in the other’s eyes a respect and mutual understanding that they’d never known before.

Finally, they tracked their targets to a new stolen car travelling down a stretch of road outside Odessa. The Soldier landed the jet ten miles away, and the Wyvern flew him to a vantage point atop a mountain of sandstone cliffs and wiry shrubs. He was heavy, but she had engineered her wings to be able to carry two targets besides herself, so she could handle an enhanced soldier with a metal arm. The Soldier did not seem particularly taken aback by the sight of the Wyvern in full uniform with the wings, either. His grey-blue eyes merely flicked over her, before he nodded his readiness to move.

Now she could hear his long, slow breaths through her ear piece as he waited for the targets’ car to arrive on their stretch of lonely road. The Wyvern was gliding above the cloud cover. Her goggles were equipped with heat sensors, so she could see the two orange dots winding up the road below.

“Two targets,” she confirmed for the Soldier. She dipped into the clouds, soaking her uniform, and poked her head just below the cloud cover. She could just make out the shapes of the targets’ bodies behind the car windshield. “Target in the right-hand passenger seat, combatant in the left-hand driver’s seat.”

“Targets sighted,” the Soldier murmured. The Wyvern flew over the car, her shadow disguised by the clouds, just as the vehicle lurched, skidded, and tumbled over the side of the road and down the nearby cliff.

The Wyvern banked, wings outstretched, looking down as she soared back and over the edge of the road. The car was smoking at the bottom of the sandstone cliff, bonnet crumpled and gasoline leaking from the tank.

The car had tumbled to the left of the road, so it was still in the Soldier’s line of sight. The Wyvern could see the glint of his metal arm, up in his sniper’s nest.

She circled the wreck until she saw movement: a flash of red hair – the wig must have fallen off – as the combatant pulled the shaking target from the front seat of the car, heaving him out of the twisted metal and supporting his head when they tumbled to the rocky ground. The combatant covered the target with her body, a gun in her hands as she looked wildly about for the shooter.

“Soldier,” the Wyvern said, her voice neutral.

“I have him.”

The Wyvern noticed the exact moment the combatant spotted her circling shadow. The woman contorted herself even further over the target, flipping over and shooting up at the sky. Her shots got remarkably close to the Wyvern, despite the blood running into her eyes.

But the woman stopped shooting when the loud _crack_ of the Soldier’s rifle rang out.

The target’s head snapped back in a burst of blood, and the female combatant’s hand flew to her abdomen. The Wyvern fired up her engines, heading for the Soldier’s nest.

“Confirm target elimination,” the Soldier said in an empty voice.

“Target eliminated,” she replied, her voice barely picking up over the sound of her engines. When she reached the Soldier he had already stowed his rifle, so she looped her arms under his and lifted him into the sky.

 

* * *

 

At the bottom of the ravine, Agent Romanoff lay in the pool of her engineer’s blood. She’d been shot before, but she’d never get used to the feeling – like red-hot barbed wire being pulled through her flesh. She put pressure on her wound and grimaced, the failure of her mission settling like a stone in her stomach. She watched the winged creature disappear into the horizon, the shooter with the metal arm in its clutches.

 _I’m going to find them_ , Natasha decided, already planning to field-dress her wounds and get the engineer’s body to the extraction point. She’d have Coulson’s team run ballistics, and she’d chase down all her old contacts for information on operatives with metal arms and wings. _I’m going to find them. I’ll show them that the Widow does not fail._

 

* * *

 

HYDRA Facility, Greece

The assets relayed the success of the mission to their handlers, and were ordered to report to a nearby HYDRA Facility. Once again the Winter Soldier piloted the jet, while the Wyvern electronically wiped all evidence of the assets’ presence in Europe. There wasn’t much to get rid of, so she mostly monitored press coverage and encrypted transmissions. The combatant was already trying to track them, despite the bullet hole in her stomach. The Wyvern respected such tenacity, but she would have a hard time tracing a pair of ghosts with no place in the world.

The Wyvern wasn’t concerned about that, but while monitoring press coverage, a headline caused her to take a sharp breath through the nose, and freeze mid-typing.

The Soldier, of course, noticed. He looked over, noting her furrowed brow and trembling fingers. His eyes tracked to the screen: “ _TONY STARK STILL MISSING AFTER AFGHANISTAN WEAPONS DEMONSTRATION; PRESUMED DEAD_ ”.

The headline sparked a burst of recognition in the Soldier, though it was faint and confused. He looked back up at the Wyvern. Her dark eyes were brighter than he had ever seen them, darting across the screen, and finally flicking up to him.

“Is it mission relevant?” Her voice was low, as if asking for a secret.

The Soldier clenched his hands on the jet’s controls, thinking. “I… I don’t…” Their targets hadn’t gone near the Afghanistan border, and he hadn’t heard anything about a Tony Stark in his briefing. But he thought he understood the Wyvern’s pull to that headline. There was… something.

Before the Soldier could dig deeper and make his growing headache worse, he had to concentrate on landing the Quinjet at the facility. HYDRA agents emerged from the base, preparing to conceal the jet and brief the assets.

The Wyvern was still staring at the headline, now accompanied by a picture of a dark-haired man with strangely-featured facial hair, wearing a sharp suit. She was staring so hard at the screen that the Soldier wondered if she’d even noticed they’d landed.

One of the agents knocked on the back of the Quinjet, and the Wyvern flinched.

The Soldier leaned over, closed the laptop’s browser and then took the device from her. She stared at him until he finally met her gaze.

He didn’t know what to say to her, so he merely held her gaze, seeing the confusion and pain swirling behind her eyes. She kept the emotions well hidden – he doubted the agents about to board the plane would notice – but he could see them. They called to something in his own stormy, tormented soul. The Soldier squeezed his eyes shut. _A weapon does not have a soul_ , he reminded himself. The things he was feeling: the fast-beating heart, the pull towards the Wyvern, the confusion, they were all symptoms of a malfunction.

“Barnes,” whispered the Wyvern.

The Soldier’s eyes snapped open. She’d spoken the word like a gift and a curse, and his mind raced with it. _Barnes._ It sounded soft, coming from her mouth, but he heard echoes and fragments of other voices saying the word: sharp, barking invocations, a teasing lilt, a resigned sigh. The Soldier remembered having a name.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern watched the Soldier as he staggered after the HYDRA operatives to the memory suppression chair. She’d seen a world of knowledge explode in his eyes when the name left her lips, followed by sharp pricks of pain.

She could barely remember how she knew to say it, let alone why she’d said it. A part of her had meant it as an olive branch: some kind of gesture after he’d witnessed her reaction to the confusing headline. Another part of her wanted to use the name as a weapon, to drive it into his heart and twist.

Listening to his screams as he fought against the chair, the Wyvern didn’t know if she was relieved, or if she wanted to rip out her own tongue. She felt drawn to him, to the picture of the man in the online article, to any place free of screams and blood.

When her time with the chair came, the metal arms of the machine sparking with the promise of pain, she recited the name in her mind: _Barnes. Barnes. Barnes._

 

* * *

 

 _November 25 th, 2010 _(24 Years Old)

_From: New York Facility Leader_

_To: Director_

_Wyvern Progress Report_

_I wish to thank you for posting the Wyvern to our Facility this year. The asset has proved invaluable in furthering HYDRA’s interests._

_As was reported, the Wyvern assisted our strike force in convincing the CEO of BattleTech Industries to pull his presentation from the Stark Expo and supply to HYDRA. The Wyvern has also been quality testing initial samples._

_Recently the Wyvern was tasked with obtaining the plans for the upcoming Stark building project, which previous operatives failed to achieve. As you will see from the attached documents, the Wyvern was successful. It appears that the project is to be called Stark Tower, and will stand in central Manhattan._

_One note on the Wyvern’s ongoing progress: handlers have intermittently reported “strange behavior” over the past few months, though they described nothing more concrete than the following. The Wyvern has twice asked handlers about the name Stark, questioning its mission relevance. Once the relevance was explained, the Wyvern became visually less unsettled, and proceeded with the mission. We have been maintaining regular wipes and cognitive recalibration to ensure the fitness of the weapon._

_Hail Hydra._

 

* * *

 

After the success of their first two assignments, the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier were periodically posted together on short, difficult missions. Hardly anyone in HYDRA remembered the bloody history between the two assets, and those who did were sure that twenty years of wipes, missions and cognitive recalibration had resigned the events of 1991 to an ugly historical truth that would never see the light of day.

The assets did have some memory recall between wipes, more often when they were together than apart. There was no predicting what might prompt a memory to surface. But their programming ensured that their handlers were never aware of their emotional distress, and the missions were usually too short for them to remember much anyway.

 

The constant dance of remembering and forgetting came to a head in late 2010.

 

* * *

 

December, 2010  _(24 Years Old_ )  
Tbilisi, Georgia

The mission was complete.

The Winter Soldier had tossed sleeping gas grenades into the manor while the Wyvern tinkered with the natural gas lines. Soon the whole household was fast asleep, breathing in the deadly hydrocarbon gas until they asphyxiated in their beds.

But the assets had to confirm target elimination, so they ensured that their masks were firmly fixed to their faces, and climbed into the manor. It was a beautiful house, with red stone pillars, wide balconies, and lush furnishings. The Wyvern climbed in through a second-storey window after the Winter Soldier disabled the security system from downstairs. She knew he would check on the three guards posted at the ground floor entrances, so she went straight for the primary target’s bedroom. The gas mask inbuilt into the Wyvern’s cowl filtered her breath as she padded across the cream carpet to the ornate four-poster bed.

The target, a prominent Georgian politician, lay still and silent beside her husband. The Wyvern pressed a gauntleted finger to the target’s throat, then the husband’s.

“Primary and secondary targets eliminated,” she murmured into her earpiece. The Soldier didn’t respond, but she could hear his steady breathing as he did his own checks downstairs.

The Wyvern moved through the rest of the upper rooms, careful not to leave any trace of a footprint in the carpet or a scrape against a wall. She was a ghost in a house full of corpses.

The Wyvern was especially careful with her sharp metal wings, conscious that the smallest spark would send the whole house up in a column of fire.

Finally, she came to a closed door painted a bright shade of green. The Wyvern gently twisted the handle, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Half the walls of the room were green, and the other half were blue. Colorful rugs, pillows and toys were strewn across the floor, and moonlight filtered in through gauzy curtains.

The Wyvern stepped across the cluttered floor. There was a bunk bed set against the far wall, and in the darkness she could just make out two lumps, one on each mattress. A plastic truck crunched under her foot, and her breath caught in her chest.

 _Focus_ , scolded a voice in her head, but the voice sounded very far away.

She reached the bunk bed. It was built of sturdy pine, with a ladder running up one side, and the vibrant blue and green comforters were almost painfully bright. The Wyvern stared at the tertiary targets, huddled under their blankets with their eyes closed and their lips parted.

She’d known they’d be there. Their details were in the mission briefing: _Twins. Six years old. 12% likelihood of their being outside the bedroom after 8:30pm._

The Wyvern hadn’t given them another thought. But now, watching their still forms in the darkness, her thermal vision showing their core temperatures beginning to drop incrementally, she couldn’t think of anything else. She’d killed children before, she knew she had. So why…

The target on the top bunk had his face turned toward the window, as if he’d been watching the moon.

The Wyvern stumbled backward, her hands shaking in their barbed gauntlets. Her chest was heaving, her lungs screaming for oxygen. Her… her mask. It must be malfunctioning. She turned on her heel and raced out of the bedroom, sprinting for the window she’d climbed through earlier, slipping out and leaping from the balcony to the garden below.

She landed with a dull thud, and her knees buckled. The Wyvern’s vision had narrowed to a pin point.

“Wyvern,” she heard the Soldier saying over the comms. She tried to speak, but she could barely get enough air into her lungs to stay conscious. She felt like the skin around her skull was constricting, threatening to suffocate her.

The Wyvern tore her mask off, goggles and all, and fell onto her hands, sucking down air as she trembled. Her mind was racing: had she been poisoned? Had her mask malfunctioned? Was it… she gasped as a stabbing pain made itself known in her chest – was she injured?

It could have been seconds or hours later that she heard the Soldier’s soft footsteps behind her.

 

* * *

 

The Soldier heard the Wyvern’s breathing change over the comms, and it immediately put him on alert. The Wyvern wasn’t a green operative, she was a weapon – whatever had her hyperventilating and choking could be a very dangerous threat. He rushed to the upper levels, saw the open bedroom door and the crushed plastic truck. From there he followed her out the window and landed in the backyard.

Seeing her now, on her hands and knees in the dirt of the garden bed, struck a chord of familiarity deep within the Soldier. She was gasping for breath, her folded wings trembling with her panic, and her dark hair had tumbled around her face. The Soldier took off his muzzle, knelt beside the Wyvern, and put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t react.

He used the hold to pull her gently backwards, and guided her to sit on the cold ground. He held her upright with his metal hand on her shoulder, and with the other rubbed small, soothing circles against her back. Her exposed face was white in the darkness, eyes wild and darting, mouth open in a grimace. But the contact against her back seemed to bring her back to herself a little, and she started trying to regulate her breathing.  
“I… the gas… my mask-” she tried to wheeze, but the Soldier merely shook his head and kept rubbing her Adamantium-reinforced back. He knew how to do this, somehow.

“It will pass,” he murmured, watching the jumping pulse in her throat. As he held her in her panic, a series of images flitted across the back of his mind. He saw a small blonde man wheezing and coughing on the filthy ground of an alleyway. He saw a curled-up soldier soaked in grime, screaming at ghosts. He saw a girl with a ripped jacket and a tear-stained face, kicking and shoving him as he set a car alight. He remembered a whisper: _You’re my mission now._

After a few minutes, the Wyvern stilled. The Soldier removed his hands from her, mind racing. He was still kneeling in the dirt.

They sat together in the dark garden in silence, matching each other’s long, slow breaths.

Finally, the Soldier spoke: “Your name is Margaret,” he said, his eyes fixed on her face. At the name she flinched, and turned to look at him. “I killed your parents.”

There was a long, terrible moment of silence. The Soldier watched the Wyvern’s eyes as they transitioned from blank shock, to recognition, and then sparked with anger. He remembered that look – he didn’t remember how many times he’d seen it, but he recognized the eruption of fury that seemed to consume her, transforming her face and irradiating her eyes.

He didn’t stop her when she knocked him backwards with a flick of her wings, or when she pinned him and held her clawed gauntlet to his throat. He remembered this too, being at her mercy. He wondered what it was about her fury that allowed him to override the programming that screamed at him to _survive._

She paused with her barbed fingers pressed into the skin of his throat. He felt blood trickle down the side of his neck and drip into the moist soil below him. The house was silent, the garden was silent, and the only thing the Soldier could see was the Wyvern’s twisted, snarling face, blocking out the moon. He didn’t look away.

The Soldier didn’t know how long they stayed like that, the Wyvern crouched over him with her claws at his jugular. But eventually, something flickered across her eyes, and the snarl faded from her face.

“You didn’t have a choice,” she murmured, and relaxed her grip on him. He could have freed himself, but he didn’t move a muscle.

“I still did it.” His voice was rough, cracking with guilt.

There were tears slipping down her cheeks now. She released his throat and slid off his chest to sit beside him. “So did I,” she whispered. “Just now.”

The Soldier closed his eyes. The Wyvern was breathing hard, not the panicked gasps of earlier but loud exhales, as if she’d just run a marathon. He didn’t know what to say to her.

Their comms crackled: “ _Soldat,_ Wyvern. Mission report.”

They’d missed their five hour check-in. The Soldier sat up, eyes opening, and looked at the Wyvern. Her cheeks were wet with tears, but the blankness was already starting to creep back into her deep brown eyes. The Soldier bowed his head, and grimaced.

“Mission complete,” he told their handler, hoping his voice didn’t betray the pain radiating from his chest.

“Good,” the handler said. “Report to extraction point.”

The Wyvern was already getting to her feet, a little shaky. In unison they walked back to their vehicle, leaving the silent house behind them.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern drove back to the extraction point, sticking to the speed limit and staring resolutely at the road. Twenty minutes into the journey, she sighed.

“Sleep,” she said, her voice hoarse. “It’s three hours to the extraction point.”

The Soldier eyed her for a moment, taking in her fixed stare and clenched knuckles. He knew she wouldn’t tell him twice. He also knew that they were both perfectly aware that the assets were not programmed to sleep on a mission unless absolutely necessary.

The Soldier closed his eyes and slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of Winter Soldier POV here! I felt it was important to include how the Soldier feels about the Wyvern, so it’s not quite so one sided. He’s just as confused and in pain as her, with a large helping of guilt and self-loathing. I want to be clear that the Soldier and the Wyvern never truly remember everything about themselves – usually they just recall enough to remember that they want to kill a certain person, or to feel guilt when looking at someone’s face. But they’re never out of the chair long enough to recall everything.
> 
> We’re getting close to some big movie events! And next chapter we’ll be checking in with someone I’ve missed ;)
> 
> As always, let me know what you think!


	10. Chapter 10

October, 2011  _(25 Years Old)_  
Bagram, Afghanistan 

The Wyvern didn’t see the Winter Soldier until the end of the next year. The Director assigned them to an extended mission in Afghanistan, to incite chaos as the US military presence there waned. They worked out of a HYDRA base in Bagram, with a team of fifteen HYDRA agents dedicated to spreading chaos and confusion.  

The agents were astounded by the lethal combination that the assets made. They’d heard mixed reports from their colleagues, some stating that the Wyvern did not work well in a team, others saying that the assets were just plain weird when they were together. They certainly weren't conversationalists, but in the month and a half the assets spent together at the Afghanistan base, the HYDRA agents could not help but admit that they were a deadly, efficient pair.  

They seemed to fit together – the invisible gun on the ground, and the swift wings in the sky. The HYDRA agents often had to demand reports, because the assets didn’t seem to need words to know what they were doing. They would just move, and the skirmish would be over seemingly before it had begun.  

The Wyvern learned how to fix and tune-up the Soldier’s metal arm, so the base mechanic could concentrate on the agents’ guns and transports. It wasn’t unusual to see the Soldier sitting, his blank stare aimed straight ahead, as the Wyvern poked precision tools into his exposed wiring. The Wyvern could service her own wings, but once an agent found the Soldier pulling a faulty section of wiring out of one of the moorings on her back, his gaze focused on the tweezers in his flesh hand.  

The agents saw a pair of well-honed weapons, working in unison to carry out their orders. But even though the assets were regularly wiped and told their trigger words, their memories flickered in and out like a mystifying carousel of images, voices and emotions. They never remembered enough between the two of them to pose any threat to HYDRA, but on the Afghanistan mission they were both more human than they had ever been in the last twenty years. 

After a particularly harrowing battle with local military forces, the Winter Soldier found himself on the top of yet another exploding building. He leapt from the roof, legs windmilling, and had the breath knocked out of him when the Wyvern collided with him mid-fall, taking his weight and coasting down to the street below. When they both had their feet on solid ground, the Soldier met her eyes, a silent thanks.  

“You’re my mission,” she replied, counting on the roar of another explosion to conceal her words from the rest of the HYDRA team on comms. His eyes flashed in reply. Later that day, he shot four heat-seeking missiles out of the sky so the Wyvern could make it safely back to the ground. In the armoured truck on the way back to base he murmured “You’re my mission, too.” Neither of them moved a muscle. 

When their handlers weren’t listening, they exchanged the words like a secret. They shared other secrets, too. Twice the Wyvern remembered the name  _Barnes_ , and told it to the Soldier. Three times he remembered  _Margaret_ , and muttered it under his breath as the Wyvern worked on his arm or carried him through the sky. They hid the confusion and pain that the names caused, and when they couldn’t, they twitched and screamed under the arms of the machine.  

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier got used to having the other asset at their side, silent and blank faced and full of secrets. Most of the time they didn’t understand why they felt the pull toward each other, only that it made them feel marginally safer, and reminded them of the parts of themselves that weren’t dead and bloody. 

 

* * *

 

December, 2011 ( _25 Years Old)_  
Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C. 

Of course, the mission didn’t last forever. As the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier stood side-by-side in an office of the bank, giving their report to the Director, the Wyvern’s heart thumped erratically in her chest. 

She hadn’t been wiped in a while, and she was remembering more than ever before. She remembered the Soldier’s iron grip on her arm as he dragged her away from her burning parents, but she also remembered the same hand rubbing soothing circles into her back as she gasped for breath in the Tbilisi manor garden. She remembered blood and screaming and metal on her bones. The Soldier's grey-blue eyes were haunting her waking visions, and she wasn’t even looking at him. She focused on the office to keep herself in the present, noting the boxes of files, the weapons case on the desk, and the steel and glass cryostasis chamber in the corner. 

The Director seemed pleased with their report. He didn’t say it, but the Wyvern could see that HYDRA’s design for that part of the world had gone as planned: crisis, war, the surrender of control.  

They related the details of their last assassination in Kandahar and fell silent. They stood at parade rest, with faces of stone.  

“Well, that’s a relief to hear,” the Director said, nodding at the technicians and agents around the room. “Alright. Wyvern, I’ve got a mission for you in Jakarta.” The Wyvern heard a faint whir from the Soldier’s arm, and knew that meant he had tensed imperceptibly. “But first,” the Director continued, “let’s get the Soldier on ice.” 

The Director gestured to the technicians, and the room sprang into action. The Soldier didn’t protest as he was ordered to climb into the cryostasis machine. He didn’t even blink when the techs turned the machine on and hooked up his vitals. 

 _He’s your mission_ , the Wyvern thought.  _Do something._  

But she didn’t move. Neither did the Soldier. His heartbeat was steady on the monitor, even when the walls of the chamber closed around him. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, at the Wyvern. She looked back. 

If the Director noticed his assets looking at each other in the final moments before the Soldier was frozen, he didn’t think anything of it. He’d had only positive reports from the agents in Afghanistan, with no signs of cognitive relapse beyond a few instances of confusion. He knew that the assets killed well together, and that was it. 

The Winter Soldier watched the Wyvern through the thick glass of the cryochamber until the ice crept into his bones, and his eyes closed.  

 

* * *

 

Two hundred miles away, Steve Rogers tried to make sense of the world. 

 

* * *

 

Not many people spoke to Tony Stark about Maggie. Mostly he thought it was because the whole Your Dead Sister thing was kind of a conversation killer, and he was usually trying to be the life of the party.  

The other reason, he suspected, was that she had become a tragic footnote in the Stark legacy. Tony himself often wondered, after the car accident, what the point was of such a clever kid if she only lived to five years old. Once he was done wondering, though, he would just end up missing her. And then he ended up drinking, and partying, and… well. He wasn’t about to go write a self-help book any time soon. 

He visited his family’s graves sometimes, though that never ended well.  

But for the public, Maggie’s death was a sad ending at the very beginning of his career. People still brought up Howard, because they all felt like they knew him, but Maria and Maggie faded away. No one wondered any more if his sister would have been the greater genius.  

 

Pepper, ever discreet, never brought up Maggie. But once they’d started dating, Tony started to talk about her. At first they were fleeting mentions, covered up in a whole flood of words, so Pepper couldn’t get a word in edgewise. They both knew what he was doing, though neither of them mentioned it. 

But one day, while inventorying old Stark projects at the L.A. headquarters, Pepper held up a small model of a jetpack. “Tony? Was this one of your early designs?” 

Tony dropped the rocket hull he was holding, and then tried to act natural by appearing to be very busy with a rack of grenade pins.  

“Tony?” She was turning it around in her hands now, smiling. 

“No, it wasn’t mine,” he eventually said, keeping his hands busy. “That was Maggie’s.” 

Pepper, bless her, didn’t let an awkward silence fall. Tony would have been down for that and then never talking about it again, but she asked: “She wanted to fly, then?” 

“She saw  _Peter Pan_ when she was about four, and never shut up about it. She nearly kidnapped Rhodey when she found out he was in the Air Force.” 

Pepper laughed softly. “She must have been bright.” 

Tony sighed, tightening a screw on the grenade pin rack just because he could. “She was. I hated it,” he said matter-of-factly. “Everyone and their mother kept talking about how she was learning and developing faster than I had.” 

Pepper hummed, then stepped towards him, took the wrench from his hand, and replaced it with the jet pack model. It felt flimsy, like he might crush it if he gripped too hard. He stared at the wall as he held it, breathing steadily.   
Pepper wrapped her arms around his middle. “I wish I could have met her.” 

“You’d have liked her more than me.” 

“It’s possible,” she teased. The kiss she pressed against his shoulder was feather-light. “But I  _love_ you.” 

 

* * *

 

May 1st, 2012 ( _25 Years Old_ )  
Camp Lehigh, New Jersey 

The Wyvern pulled up outside the defunct army barracks at sunset. She eyed the chain-link fences and red brick buildings, then got out of the car, hoisting the duffle bag with her wings and uniform over her shoulder. 

Three hours ago, her harried-looking handler had ordered her to report to Camp Lehigh, with scarce instructions about what to do once she got there. They didn’t explain why, but the Wyvern had picked up on some of the details – something big was going down with S.H.I.E.L.D., and all hands had been called in, including all the undercover HYDRA operatives. The Director, in the spare moments he had, decided to post the Wyvern to this compound while S.H.I.E.L.D. was distracted. 

On the way the Wyvern had turned on the car radio to see if she could find out what was happening – it might prove mission relevant – but only heard something about the anticipated powering-up of Stark Tower. She had furrowed her brow at the odd jump in her heartbeat, and turned off the radio. 

Now, dressed in jeans and a button-down blouse, the Wyvern glanced around, scaled the chain link fence, then picked her way through the overgrown weeds to the munitions bunker. It was a warm day. Despite her dusty, peeling surrounds, the Wyvern felt oddly light; perhaps because there was no one else around. She was used to narrow facility corridors packed with agents, and bright flourescent lights. 

The Wyvern produced the key for the munitions bunker, then heaved open the door and went inside. The air was stale. She paced through the dusty offices, eyeing the empty desks and the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on the wall. No wonder the Director had wanted her here while S.H.I.E.L.D. was looking the other way – this must be where the organisation started. 

In the next room, the Wyvern stopped in her tracks before three black and white photographs on the wall. One was of a man in a WWII Colonel’s uniform, one of a beautiful woman with a piercing gaze, and the one in the middle… 

The Wyvern reached up to the image of the moustachioed man with dark hair and dark eyes. The other people in the photos looked proud, patriotic, but this man… he looked like a hard man. Serious. She was sure she’d seen that look before. 

The Wyvern’s trembling fingers connected with the photo and the frame slipped off one of its pins, sliding down the wall a little. The glass cracked, and part of it fell from the photo and shattered at her feet. 

She flinched, yanked her hand away and turned to the left, determined not to look back. She carried out the rest of her instructions: revealing the secret elevator, putting in the code and descending to the bottom level of the base. Her hand was still trembling when the elevator doors opened to a darkened room. She walked in and the power switched on, illuminating a warehouse-sized room completely filled with ancient computer banks, coated in dust and whirring softly. 

The Wyvern dropped her duffle bag and stared. She noted the stained, boxy camera that lifted to capture her with its gleaming black eye. She could hear the system – or whatever it was that these computers did – booting up, a rising melody of whirring fans and electronic clicks. The desk of screens before her flickered to life, showers of green static with an indistinct shape forming within. 

“Welcome,  _fräulein_.”  

The Wyvern did not react to the mechanical, glitchy voice emanating from the speakers. She held her ground, taking in the sheer scale of the computer banks around her. 

“May I just say,  _Wyvern_ ,” somehow the voice managed to sound scathing, “it is an honour to have one of HYDRA’s greatest creations inside my brain.” 

 

The Wyvern stayed at the bottom of the old S.H.I.E.L.D base with Arnim Zola’s computer consciousness for the better part of three days. The consciousness had actually directly contacted the Director, demanding the help of the Wyvern to perform maintenance on his servers and assist with upgrading his software.  

Once her mission was explained to her, the Wyvern got to work. She paced along the aisles and aisles of databanks, following Zola’s directions to the most damaged or dysfunctional ones and repairing the machinery with the tools she’d been ordered to bring. She hooked up wiring, replaced fans and circuit boards, and worked at the computer screens for hours, interacting with Zola’s programming. She barely slept, catching only a couple of hours during a reboot, and ate nutrition bars specifically designed for her higher-intake diet while she tinkered with Zola’s brain. 

As she worked, the computer consciousness spoke to her. The Wyvern got the sense that though it was active in the world, Zola’s consciousness had not had someone to talk to in many years. She never responded to his reflections and veiled taunts, beyond going where he directed her and fixing what he told her to. 

“You are a fascinating weapon,  _fräulein_ ,” he mused at the end of the first day. “A marvel of HYDRA’s might and mind. You are everything the free world fears: a pinnacle of human strength, skill, and intellect, consigned to the shadows. You, like me, will be an architect of HYDRA’s ultimate victory over mankind.” 

The Wyvern’s only response was to continue re-wiring one of the memory centres. 

On the second day, Zola spoke up after a long silence: “The world above is changing, Wyvern. The heroes gather, flawed as they are.” 

On the third day, he called her back to the keyboard interface. “I am going to show you something, Wyvern. I would like your  _insight_.” 

She sat at the creaking chair before Zola’s largest screen, her hands blistered and burned from working with the overheating tech. They’d heal soon. 

Zola showed her an algorithm. It was pages and pages long, scrolling in green script down his enormous screen. The Wyvern scanned it silently, a furrow deepening between her brows. 

“Well?” Zola asked, once she’d read it through. “What do you make of my work?” 

“It’s…” the Wyvern cleared her throat – the dusty air had clogged it. “It’s a predictive targeting system.” 

“Yes,  _fräulein_.” 

“What work does it need?” 

The speakers emitted an awful, mechanical laugh. “Ever the mechanic, I see. It does not need  _work_ , Wyvern, it is almost completed. I am showing you this, because it is your legacy.” 

Images flickered on the auxiliary screens: the S.H.I.E.L.D logo dissolving into HYDRA logo. A flash of images ranging from black and white to full colour: faces, events, places, that the Wyvern knew were significant from the last seventy years, but could not name. Her breath caught in her chest as the image of the dark-haired man popped up. 

“Howard Stark was one of the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D.” The Wyvern watched a clip of the dark-haired man – Stark – shaking hands with the older Colonel, while the woman smiled in the background. “He and his colleagues brought me into their midst. They were weak, allowing HYDRA to grow within their ranks.” An image cropped up of a man who must have been Zola, short and stooped, with round glasses. “Howard Stark also brought you into the world, Wyvern.” 

A family portrait: Stark beside an elegant woman, holding a swaddled baby while a gangly-looking teen stood to the side. The Wyvern’s heartrate doubled, and she pushed back in her chair. 

“And here we both are, working together towards HYDRA’s new world order,” continued Zola. “ _That_ is Stark’s legacy: two of the world’s greatest minds, working to bring down everything he created.” 

The Wyvern’s breath was coming fast. She stumbled to her feet, seized her bag, and ran for the elevator.  

“You are the greatest weapon Howard Stark ever created, Wyvern!” the computerised voice called after her. She slammed the elevator button, cracking it. “And you will turn his legacy to dust.” 

The Wyvern pulled on her wings in the elevator, gasping for breath, her head reeling. She tore her blouse in her haste, and left her bag behind as she ran out of the bunker and into the afternoon light.  

Her mind was a mess, mangled images and voices fighting for space. She sobbed, gripping her head. 

 _You will turn his legacy to dust_. 

The Wyvern raised her wings and launched into the sky. Her only thought was to  _get away_ , away from the insidious computerized voice and the terrible truths. The wind shrieked in her ears and tore at her face, near-blinding her as she soared out of the compound. 

She didn’t make it far. Zola alerted her handlers in New York, who instantly activated the remote kill switch for her wings.  

 

The Wyvern lay in the dust of Camp Lehigh’s training yard, with one leg twisted beneath her and three broken ribs jabbing into her left lung. If she’d had a mission, she might have been able to push through the pain, clamber to her feet and stagger out of the camp. But she had nothing: just a dead pair of wings, and a legacy of blood. 

Later, when her handlers came, they eyed the crumpled asset. She was alive, looking up at the sky, but wasn’t moving.  

“Send her to be wiped,” said the lead handler. “She’s done here.” 

 

* * *

 

Eighty miles away, the other half of Howard Stark’s legacy sat in a Shawarma restaurant with his teammates. 

 

* * *

 

Over the next year and a half, the Wyvern was as lethally efficient as ever. No trace of Zola’s taunts remained, and the Wyvern’s programming only faltered twice. 

The first time was on an espionage mission in Singapore in December, 2012. The Wyvern was perched on a windowsill of a high-rise skyscraper, wearing her black and gunmetal grey full-body combat suit, the slitted red goggles, and her wings. She was spying on a neighboring building, when she caught sight of a headline on one of the resident’s TV screens: “ _TONY STARK’S MANSION DESTROYED: BILLIONARE FEARED DEAD_.” 

The Wyvern’s reaction to the headline felt eerily familiar – it felt like someone had dug a hook into her gut and  _wrenched._ She abandoned her mission for a moment, staring at the TV screen, trying to process her physical malfunction. The screen showed an image of the man – Tony Stark – beside an image of the Iron Man. The Wyvern reflected on her operational knowledge about Iron Man: level 6 combatant, advanced weaponry, genius IQ. She tried to connect the dots between the Iron Man and her current mission, but could find no causality. 

There was movement in her target’s apartment, drawing the Wyvern’s attention back to the mission. She pondered her physical malfunction in response to the news about the Iron Man until she was wiped three days later.  

The second time her programming faltered was after a two day mission with the Winter Soldier in late 2013. The assets took down a vigilante cell in Cuba who were looking a little too closely into HYDRA’s interests, and impressed their handlers with their silent communication, effortless cooperation and the precision of their kills.  

It wasn’t until the very end of their mission, when the Soldier murmured  _you are my mission_  as he was taken away to be frozen, that the Wyvern realized that she had been missing a part of herself. But then it was wiped away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I re-watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I noticed that the framed photo of Howard was crooked and the glass was cracked – now that’s a detail I can work with. 
> 
> Also, I feel like at his heart (or mind, whatever), Zola is an insecure man. He didn’t have to do any of this, but he was bested by Howard Stark in multiple ways, and he sees this as his ultimate victory: his Winter Soldier killing Howard, and the organisation he helped to foster turning the Howard’s daughter into an obedient weapon. And we know from his scene in CA:TWS that he likes to gloat. 
> 
> Next chapter will be the end of the jumping through the years, and I am so excited!


	11. Chapter 11

January 6th, 2014  _(27 Years Old)_  
HYDRA Research Base, Sokovia

“Wyvern to Research Base, requesting landing, code sigma seven-seven-three.” Once her landing coordinates were confirmed, the Wyvern called: “three minutes to touchdown,” over her shoulder. The two agents in the cabin of the Quinjet buckled themselves into their seats, the younger one clutching a long, black case.

The Wyvern didn’t usually serve as a pilot for HYDRA missions, but in this case she was also acting as protection. She’d smuggled these agents out of a S.H.I.E.L.D. research facility in the US, with orders to see the agents – and, more importantly, their cargo – safely to Sokovia. The younger agent had been shooting nervous glances at the Wyvern for the whole flight, but she must have worked with the elder one before, because he treated her like the weapon she was.

Once the Wyvern brought the Quinjet safely down on the landing pad of the white stone fortress, she opened the rear doors and got out of the pilot’s seat. She was waiting for the agents to exit before her, but the younger one was clearly intimidated by her dark uniform, red goggles and black wings, and didn’t appear to be able to move. She stood in silence a moment longer, then strode past them and out onto the fortress roof.

There was a whole host of agents waiting for them, arranged around a man wearing a monocle over his right eye. The man wore a stiff black uniform, and his hair was shaven closely to his head. He eyed the Wyvern with keen fascination, not the fear or disgust she was used to, but his attention was soon absorbed by the black case the younger agent carried off the Quinjet.

“Baron Strucker,” the older agent said, inclining his head. “The extraction was a complete success.”

“Excellent,” Strucker said. “Let’s get that down to Dr. List right away.”

The Wyvern followed the men as they descended into the fortress, her hands loose at her sides and her sharp gaze taking in everything. It seemed that every room in the fortress had been converted into a lab, with computers running simulations, chemicals titrating in tubes, and scientists in lab coats scurrying from one place to another. From what the Wyvern saw, she deduced that they were working on enhancements: human experimentation. But it didn’t matter: her mission was to see the cargo safely to the Sokovian facility and await further instruction. She would comply.

They reached an underground lab packed with computer screens from wall to wall, with an empty table in the middle. An elderly man in a brown trench coat stood from his seat as they entered, his eyes fixed on the case. Without having to be told, the younger agent placed the case on the empty table, flicked open the fastenings and opened it.

There was a long silence. The Wyvern ran her eyes over the cargo: a long, intricately designed silver and gold sceptre, with a glowing blue stone housed within the blade. The stone pulsed and almost seemed to hum, enthralling the occupants of the room.

“You have done well, gentlemen,” said Strucker eventually. “You may leave.”

The agents scurried out. The Wyvern remained.

Strucker was murmuring to the man in the trench coat: “Doctor List, this is the future of our work here. I want you to put a hold on all other experiments, _this_ is what will give us our army.”

List nodded, his eyes round as he stared at the sceptre. “Yes, Herr Strucker. But we will need more-”

“I am aware, Doctor,” said Strucker. “I have men already working on it.” At that Strucker turned on his heel, and cocked his head at the sight of the Wyvern waiting, watching. She didn’t move a muscle under his calculating gaze.

“What we are doing here will be greater than the sum of Peters’ work on the Wyvern Project,” he eventually said. “What took him ten years will take us ten minutes, with this resource, and will be superior to you in every way.”

The Wyvern didn’t move. Doctor List didn’t seem to hear Strucker, as he was already conferring with the other scientists in the room.

Strucker eventually sneered. “The Director has ordered that the Wyvern return to the Washington Facility,” he said. “I think he is worried that I will try to _improve_ you. But he need not fear: you are the best that HYDRA could do with the resources available on this earth. I have looked beyond.” He looked over his shoulder at the glowing sceptre, then back at the Wyvern. She still hadn’t moved.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re dismissed. Return to America.”

The Wyvern turned on her heel and left the lab. Strucker was familiar to her: his calculating eyes, clipped accent and his talk of being better than what came before. She had a recollection of a dark suit, stained by blood. She shook it away.

On her way back up through the facility to the landing pad, the Wyvern crossed paths with a group of civilians. They were surrounded by armed guards, and they looked nervous, but not as if they wanted to get away. They looked like they wanted to get away from the approaching Wyvern, however. They cringed to the other side of the corridor, their eyes wide as they took in her folded metal wings and glowing red eyes. The Wyvern paid them no mind. Her mission was to return to the Washington Facility. She would comply.

She felt their gazes on her back as she passed, but she didn’t look back. She didn’t notice a pair of dark-haired twins, pressed together and covered in grime from the protest, share a look as she disappeared from view.

“They are going to make us like _that_?” the girl whispered to her brother.

Her brother’s face hardened, and he squeezed his sister’s hand. “If that’s what it takes.”

 

* * *

 

January 9th, 2014  
Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

The Wyvern had returned to the HYDRA facility two days ago, was wiped and triggered, then told to wait for orders.

They gave her some programming from Project Insight to look over, and yesterday she’d been tasked with tracing a payment made to an Algerian pirate. She’d passed the information on to her handlers, then was ordered to wait again.

Now, though, the facility was abuzz with activity. The Director had arrived twenty minutes ago, ordered the facility’s strike team to mobilise and the technicians to activate the Winter Soldier. The Wyvern had gone to the armoury.

Now, as she selected guns, knives and grenades, securing them to her uniform, she heard the minute squeak as the door opened.

A man with a metal arm strode into the room, and froze at the sight of the Wyvern. Her skin prickled, her instincts recognising a powerful opponent, but she didn’t react. _This must be the Winter Soldier._

He was an inch or so taller than her, with long, dark hair and blank eyes. After a moment of observation he moved again, striding toward a weapons case.

They worked around each other in silence, each asset monitoring the movements of the other. The Soldier moved to the rack of knives, and the Wyvern’s eyes widened incrementally when she saw him stash no less than seven knives across his uniform.

They finished arming themselves at the same time, and paused together at the door. Neither of them wanted to show their back to the other. Finally the Wyvern stepped out first, making a show of shuffling her wings and revealing the razor sharp barbs. The Soldier didn’t react.

The assets walked in silence to the main foyer of the bank, pulling on their masks. The Soldier’s arm whirred, and the sound lowered the Wyvern’s hackles a little – something about the mechanical noise seemed familiar.

The strike team, dressed as Metropolitan Police, were waiting for them. The Director also stood in the foyer, his face weathered. He nodded at the sight of his assets.

“I’ve got a mission for you. One target, level six.” He turned to the strike team. “Director Fury is suspicious of Insight, and he needs to be taken out. The assets are there as _back up_ , it’s best for Insight that they remain in the shadows for now. I don’t expect you to fail.” The look he shot the strike team was charged with meaning. “Go now.”

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier got into the same van. She looked up, eyeing his black goggles and muzzle, and somehow knew he was looking back at her.

 

* * *

 

“Target is on the move,” the Wyvern reported from her rooftop as the bullet-ridden SUV took off down the street. She’d watched the skirmish in the street with mounting surprise and respect – both the car and the man had stood up to the strike team with surprising fortitude. But weapons did not feel, so she brushed it all aside.

“Driving west, strike team in pursuit. Target is armed.” She ran across the rooftop and jumped, spreading her wings to clear the gap between the buildings. As she sprinted across the next rooftop, she glanced over the edge. The SUV was weaving between the traffic, with two of the strike team’s police cars in pursuit. She picked up her pace.

“Target status?” asked the handler running the mission.

“Injured, but still capable.” She heard glass smashing and skidded to a halt, looking over the edge again. The target had driven the SUV through lines of traffic and into a bus stop. The remaining members of the strike team had left their vehicles, and were now firing at him through the bus windows. The Wyvern pulled a submachine gun from a holster on her back and fired a spray of shots at the target’s head. She saw the man’s head jerk up, spotting her on the roof, but the windshield of the vehicle held.

Seconds later the target had taken out two more strike team agents and peeled away from the bus stop. The Wyvern gritted her teeth.

“Only two strike cars remaining,” she told the handler. She stowed her gun and fired up her wings, soaring across the intersection and flying low over the rooftops.

“Stay out of sight,” the handler reminded her, his voice terse. The Wyvern obliged, cutting power to her wings and resorting to jumping from rooftop to rooftop once more. She followed the sounds of gunfire and screeching tires. She knew – somehow – that the Soldier would have kept up with the chase as well, a few blocks away.

The Wyvern watched the target’s SUV brake suddenly. The strike cars continued accelerating into the upcoming intersection, and were wiped out by a yellow truck. She heard their screams over the comms.

The Wyvern had her orders. She snapped her wings open and rocketed into the sky, calling: “Strike team eliminated, target heading east. Engaging now.”

“Confirm: engaging,” came the Soldier’s low voice. Their handler said nothing, no doubt recalling the Director’s meaningful look earlier.

Now flying directly over the street, the Wyvern boosted her engines to catch up with the battered SUV. As she flew up the road she saw the Soldier’s dark figure pacing in the other direction, towards the car.

She got there seconds before the Soldier. She swooped over the SUV, deafening the target with a scream of jet engines, and dropped a grenade just as she cleared the bonnet. She angled her wings and spiralled upwards. The grenade detonated beneath the SUV’s back wheels, blasting it off the ground and into a front flip, screeching across the asphalt. Out of the corner of her eye, the Wyvern saw the Soldier step out of the way of the careening ball of fire, gun aloft.

“Vehicle neutralised,” the Soldier said into the comms. He stalked across the road towards the upturned, smoking SUV. The Wyvern circled overhead, ready to provide cover at a moment’s notice.

 

Bloody and bruised in the car below, Nick Fury turned to see a figure dressed in black approaching his open window. The whining sound of jet engines roared above his car, and a large shadow passed over the road.

Fury cursed under his breath and fired up the Mouse Hole device.

 

The Soldier was silent after ripping the SUV’s door off its hinges. The Wyvern made one last circle over the crash, then powered down her engines and came in to land. Her boots hit the tarmac without a sound.

“Target status?” came the handler’s voice, finally.

“Escaped the scene,” the Winter Soldier replied. The Wyvern folded her wings close to her body, gritting her teeth. The Soldier looked from the SUV to her, and though the goggles still masked his features, she could sense his irritation. They hadn’t completed their mission. She cocked her head.

“The Director’s not going to like this,” she heard the handler sigh.

“We will find him,” the Wyvern replied.

She and the Winter Soldier looked at each other through their goggles for a moment more, before the Soldier turned and stalked in the opposite direction, towards their van. She followed.

 

* * *

 

The target was not an easy man to find. The Soldier drove the van while the Wyvern worked on a laptop, going over the target’s file and scanning CCTV cameras. She managed to track down a few of his safehouses in the city, but when she and the Soldier arrived they were empty.

They were in periodic contact with their handlers: it seemed the Director was indeed unhappy with the strike team, and had ordered that the assets find and eliminate the target as soon as possible. Some of the strike team had survived, and there were other operatives being assigned to the facility at the bank, but for now it was just the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier. Hours had passed since the engagement with the SUV, and night was falling.

After combing through the target’s financial records, the Wyvern sat back in the passenger seat, her brow furrowed. She and the Soldier had removed their goggles, but otherwise their faces were still covered. The street lights passed over their heads, throwing them into light and shadow.

“Location?” The Soldier asked, noticing her sudden stillness.

“Not yet,” she replied. Her brow was still furrowed. She wasn’t getting anywhere with the target’s file, so she considered his nature instead. She’d had some training – sometime, somewhere – in profiling. The target was the head of an intelligence organisation, and he had just discovered that he didn’t know who to trust. He was a combatant, as he’d just proven to the strike team, but he was also a delegator: he passed missions to the asset best qualified for the job. So who would he give this mission to?

The Wyvern went back to the target’s file, and scrolled to the section labelled “Assets”.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier arrived at the apartment building ten minutes before Captain Rogers did; enough time for the Soldier to find an appropriate sniper’s nest and for the Wyvern to fly to the rooftop of another building and hack the surveillance already set up in Captain Rogers’ home. She crouched in a dark corner of her rooftop, hunched over the laptop. Once she had hacked the bugs, she peered into Captain Rogers’ apartment. She didn’t have any line of sight through the windows, but her goggles picked up the heat signatures of everyone in the building. She watched as a warm body climbed into the apartment via the window.

“Two heat signatures in the apartment,” she murmured to the Soldier over the comms. She had her earpiece in one ear and a headphone connected to the laptop in the other. A crooning jazz song rang out in the apartment. “Audio compromised.”

“Copy. Working on sightlines.”

While the Soldier shuffled along the lip of his own rooftop, closer to the window of the apartment, the Wyvern went back to her laptop. She’d just identified several personal-use electronic devices in the apartment when two masculine voices filtered in over the song. The lower voice, pinched with pain, began speaking about his wife.

The Wyvern’s fingers danced over the keyboard, bringing up a voice file for the target.

“Who else knows about your wife?” she barely picked up the words over the song.

“Just… my friends.”

The voice comparison software lit up.

“Is that what we are?”

“Target identified,” the Wyvern hissed. “Southwest corner.”

“Copy,” came the Soldier’s low voice. Half a second later, three shots rang out and the target’s heat signature crumpled to the floor. The Wyvern snapped her laptop closed and zipped it into her uniform, keeping the audio linkup to the bugs in one ear. “Target down,” she murmured, ears straining. “Still breathing.”

The apartment’s door slammed open, and there was a hurried conversation between a woman and a man. She kept her goggles fixed on the target’s heat signature, watching his body temperature drop. She’d wait for confirmation of target elimination.

But then: “Tell them I’m in pursuit,” came a low voice, and the window in the west wall of the apartment exploded outward.

The target’s asset had thrown himself out of his own window and into the next building, and was sprinting toward the Soldier’s location.

The Soldier was already running. She could see him racing along the edge of his rooftop, his arm flashing in the lights. The Wyvern tensed, looking from the Soldier to the bleeding target. She _knew_ the Soldier could outrun any foot pursuit, save maybe hers, so she resolved to stay and monitor the target. But then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a large heat signature _streaking_ after the Soldier, ripping through the adjoining building at impossible speeds. He was closing in.

The Wyvern’s wings snapped open and she leaped into the air, keeping her engines on low power to avoid detection. She soared over the top of the apartment building, and switched off her thermal vision. The combatant threw something round at the Soldier’s back. The Soldier skidded to a halt, caught it – a shield? – and tossed it back at the combatant. In the same moment, the Wyvern swooped over the man’s head, caught the Soldier’s outstretched metal arm, and pulled him off the rooftop.

His weight felt familiar. The Wyvern dove down the side of the building and pulled into a sharp bank, sending them shooting back around the building and out of sight. They landed beside their van, climbed in, and peeled away from the scene.

 

Back on the rooftop, Steve Rogers ran to the edge and looked out. There was no trace of the bafflingly powerful metal-armed stranger, or the winged shadow he thought he’d seen. Heart pounding, he lowered his shield. Whoever’d shot Fury had vanished.

 

* * *

 

_Fury’s been shot._

Natasha Romanoff fought through the busy hospital to the surgical observation room and burst through the door. She came to a halt beside Steve. The scene before her was bloody, and she knew she’d never seen Fury look so… vulnerable.

She caught her breath. “Is he going to make it?”

“I don’t know.” Steve was leaning against the glass, jaw clenched.

“Tell me about the shooter.”

“He’s fast. Strong.” He paused. “Had a metal arm. And… a partner.”

 _A circling shadow, a burning pain in her side. The sun glancing off a metal arm on the mountaintop._ Natasha fought not to react, but she couldn’t help the small gasp that escaped her lips. If Steve or Hill noticed, they didn’t say anything.

“Ballistics,” she whispered, keeping her voice even.

Hill chimed in with a shake of her head. “Three slugs. No rifling, completely untraceable.”

“Soviet made.”

Hill looked at her, frowning. “Yeah.”

Natasha didn’t look away from Fury. She’d said she’d find them. She hadn’t considered the consequences if she failed.

 

In the next room, Nick Fury’s heartrate plummeted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I based some of the scepter stuff off the comics (I haven’t read them, but the Marvel Universe Wiki is suuuuper helpful. That’s where all the dates come from, too).
> 
> Also I won't be putting her age in beside the dates any more, as we're not longer rushing through the years: in this chapter and in the upcoming ones, she's twenty seven.
> 
> Hey lovely subscribers, don’t forget to kudos & comment!


	12. Chapter 12

January 10th, 2014  
Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

On arriving back at the bank the assets gave their mission report, then were ordered to sit in the vault and wait.

One of the handlers, a balding man with a beard and glasses, had tried to speak up: "We could get them to-"

But he was cut off by the younger handler, wearing a bow tie: "The Director's the only one authorised to give the assets missions right now. He's busy with S.H.I.E.L.D., so they're just going to have to wait."

At that, the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had been left alone in the vault, save for the occasional rotation of guards and technicians. They were ignored.

They sat on hard metal chairs against the walls of lockboxes, still wearing their uniforms. The Wyvern didn't know what the Winter Soldier thought about – if he thought about anything – while he waited.

She simply existed in the snowstorm of her mind, recalling flashes of sound from the mission, and considering the silent weapon to her left. His breathing was slow, deep, and… in time with hers. She wondered when that had happened. They sat and breathed together, and the Wyvern wondered why he seemed so familiar. He wasn't familiar like the Director was, and certainly not like the metal chair that loomed on the other side of the vault. She'd  _trusted_ him on the mission, though she knew trust wasn't a part of her programming. His voice was familiar in her commpiece. The low clicks and whirs of his metal arm were like a song she'd heard before.

At some point in the night, their handlers sent in nutrition bars and water bottles. The Soldier and the Wyvern equally divided the supplies, pulled off their masks, and ate in silence. When they were done, they put their masks back on: no one had called an end to their mission, so they had to be ready.

The Wyvern noticed when the Soldier fell asleep. He didn't move, and his mask and goggles concealed his features. His breathing didn't even change, but she  _knew._ When he woke up two hours later, the Wyvern allowed her eyes to shut behind her goggles. She dreamed of nothing.

When she woke up, neither she nor the Soldier had moved. But he held his next breath for a second longer when she woke, before resuming their shared pattern.

A few hours later, they heard a group of guards gossiping as they walked past.

"… took out  _two_ strike teams on his way out-"

"And a Quinjet-"

"… Director must be sending out the assets soon…" The voices drifted away.

No orders came. The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had been told to sit and wait. They complied.

 

* * *

 

George Washington University Hospital, Washington D.C.

Steve held Natasha against the wall of the staffroom, teeth gritted as they hissed at each other. He'd been attacked by his own team, shot at, lied to, and hunted by the organisation Peggy had built. He needed  _something,_ and Natasha's verbal gymnastics were only making him angrier.

Natasha seemed to see it in his eyes. After another second of thought, she finally threw him a bone.

"I know who killed Fury."

His shoulders loosened and he let her go, but he didn't step back. There was a moment of silence before she continued.

"Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier." She looked into his eyes. "He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last  _fifty_  years."

"So he's a ghost story." Steve's brow was furrowed and his glare intense, but Natasha didn't flinch.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran; somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. With his  _partner_." She paused, watching Steve absorb the story. "I was covering my engineer so he shot him, straight through me." She lifted her shirt, revealing the puckered scar on her left hip. "Soviet slug, no rifling." She cocked an eyebrow and smirked. "Bye-bye bikinis."

Steve levelled his gaze at her a second longer, then lifted his head. "Yeah, I bet you look terrible in 'em now. And his partner?"

"Just as murky. I didn't get a good look, just saw a shadow of wings." Recognition flashed in Steve's eyes. "She's called the Wyvern-"

"She?"

Natasha smirked, almost a grimace, and looked away for an instant. "Another ghost story, one I first heard where… where I was trained. The older girls had faced her, and each of them failed. My teacher spoke about her once: said she was a monster. This coming from a woman who trained girls to become murderers and called them masterpieces."

Natasha and Steve looked at each other for another long moment, now on even footing.

She eventually continued: "Going after them – either of them – is a dead end. I know, I've tried." She lifted her hand, revealing the hard drive. "Like you said, they're a ghost story."

He took the USB. "Then let's find out what the ghosts want."

 

* * *

 

Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

Later in the day, the handler with the bowtie walked into the vault.

"Wyvern, the Director just put you on tracking a pair of targets. They've got a hard drive with sensitive information, it just pinged at a shopping mall but the targets got away. File's on the computer there."

The Wyvern got to her feet, ignoring the strain of her muscles after sitting still so long. She walked past the deactivated Memory Suppression Machine to the computer screen on the other side of the room, and got to work.

S.H.I.E.L.D. already had teams of technicians tracking the hard drive and the targets, so the Wyvern monitored police bulletins, scanned shipping manifests and chased down all the unconventional methods she could think of. The targets were good, staying well off the radar. The Wyvern gave hourly reports to her handlers, pinging a few car thefts and police reports of suspicious activity.

As she worked, the Soldier remained in his chair on the other side of the vault. She could feel him watching her, though he didn't move. Once, when a handler came in with nutrition bars again and the assets took their masks off, the Wyvern caught a flicker of  _something_ crossing the Soldier's grey-blue eyes.

 _Mission_ , thought the Wyvern. And then:  _secrets._

She furrowed her brow, and returned to her screen.

 

* * *

 

Two hundred miles away, Arnim Zola's computer consciousness taunted Steve and Natasha. The hard drive was plugged into the sleek black port that the Wyvern had installed two years ago.

"For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war." In amongst the flashes of marching troops, anguished faces and explosions, there was a shot of the Wyvern's shadow silhouetted across the rocky ground of a desert battlefield.

When the missile came and the compound was obliterated, Steve's mind reeled with everything he had learned.

Rumlow spotted the Captain's footprint in the rubble, and put a finger to his earpiece. "Call in the assets."

 

* * *

 

Director Pierce's Home, Washington D.C.

The Wyvern sat beside the Winter Soldier in the dark kitchen, waiting for the Director. The kitchen table was red in the glow from her goggles, and moonlight glinted off the red star on the Soldier's arm. They had been ordered to report to this address for more orders. They had complied.

When the Director padded into the kitchen and opened his fridge, he was more casually dressed than the Wyvern had ever seen him – at least, that she could remember. The image of a man with white blonde hair, wearing flannel pyjamas in the ocean spray shimmered across her mind. She blinked the image away.

The Director did a double take when he saw them – had he expected them to knock? – and closed the fridge door.

"I'm going to go, Mr Pierce," called a woman's voice from the corridor. "You need anything before I leave?"

The Soldier had noted the housekeeper before they'd infiltrated the building. She had already been through the kitchen and turned off the lights.

The Soldier and the Wyvern watched the Director as he called back: "No. Uh, it's fine, Renata, you can go home."

"Okay, night-night!"

The Wyvern felt a flicker of emotion at the casual endearment, but brushed it aside.

The Director took in the sight of his assets sitting together at his kitchen table for a moment longer.

"Want some milk?"

He wasn't surprised when they didn't respond. He began briefing them, circling the countertop and joining them at the table. Their eyes were blank as he gave them their targets and their timeframe.

Both assets tensed imperceptibly when the housekeeper walked back in.

"Sir, I-I forgot my… phone…" Renata's eyes flicked from the metal arm, to the glowing red eyes, to her employer's wincing face. The assets stared back.

"Oh, Renata. I wish you would have knocked."

Neither asset flinched when the Director shot Renata. When the briefing was complete, the assets stood and left the house, not looking back at the woman's sprawled, bleeding body.

 

* * *

 

January 11th, 2014  
Baltimore Washington Parkway, Maryland

On the way back from liberating Sam's wings from Fort Meade, Natasha and Steve were briefing their recruit on the situation. He took it pretty well, accepting the whole HYDRA conspiracy with minimal swearing.

"Hey Wilson," Natasha asked, tapping her foot to the beat of the song on the radio. "You ever hear of anyone else with wings kind of like yours? A woman?"

Steve tensed at the wheel.

"Uh, no, should I have?" Sam was running diagnostics on his wing pack in the back seat.

"It's not likely, I was just checking.  _So_ ," she said, in the tone of someone about to spill some juicy gossip, "HYDRA's working with these two assassins…"

 

* * *

 

HYDRA Strike Van, Washington D.C.

"Anything?"

The Wyvern was not programmed to feel irritation, but she was certainly feeling  _something_ as her handler asked her the same question for the seventh time. She knew he'd been briefed that when the Wyvern had something, she would inform her handlers.

The Wyvern did not show this on her face. She chose to ignore the malfunction, and shook her head in response to her handler's question.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had been tracking the targets since the early hours of the morning. The were working with a newly formed combat team, scoping out locations the targets might use to go to ground, and following up on acquaintances.

The question was especially irritating because the Wyvern  _almost_ had something. Or she thought she did. She'd flagged a theft at Ford Meade from two hours ago, impressed by the skill and stealth of the break in. She'd been researching the stolen item and linked it to a Samuel Thomas Wilson, ex Air Force, currently working at the Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C. She couldn't find any known links between Wilson and the targets, though, so it could be a dead end.

Until: "I've got something."

The handler was at her shoulder in seconds. "Explain."

She complied, explaining the break-in and the veteran, and how she'd pinged the plates of Wilson's car outside a building where S.H.I.E.L.D. Officer Jasper Sitwell was having a meeting.

"So?"

"Sitwell failed to report back to the Triskelion," the Wyvern explained, and then pulled up a CCTV shot of Wilson getting into a car with Sitwell. She followed it up with a photo from a different location, showing the two getting into a new car, this time with two shadowy figures already inside. "They were smart with avoiding the cameras, but I managed to pull this from a tourist's location-tagged Instagram."

"God bless America," said her handler. "Where's that car now?"

The Wyvern pulled up the tracking program she'd set up to monitor the plates of the targets' new car, and showed her handler their three last pinged locations.

He nodded, and turned to the rest of the team. "We'll cut them off at the freeway. Let's move out!"

 

* * *

 

Causeway, Washington D.C.

The plan was simple: no more playing around with police disguises or hiding the assets. The mission was elimination and they would go anywhere, do anything, to achieve it.

The Wyvern was in the air, her arms looped under the Winter Soldier's as they soared over rooftops and telephone wires to the freeway. His right arm was warm in hers.

"We've got eyes on target," said their handler over comms. The Wyvern peered over the Soldier's shoulder at the strike team's heavy combat vehicle just as it pulled onto the freeway. Her eyes tracked forward from the vehicle, finally catching on the targets' black Chevrolet.

"Confirm," the Wyvern replied. "Commencing contact." She had barely formulated the thought before her wings responded, folding and shifting their angle, sending the assets into an accelerating dive. She realised, moments before they were over the car, that she hadn't told the Soldier what she planned to do, but judging by his bunched muscles and intense focus, he already knew.

She swooped over the targets' car, dropped the Soldier on the roof and rocketed ahead, drawing the targets' attention to her screaming engines and black wings. She heard glass shattering, and a scream.

"Auxiliary target eliminated," the Soldier stated.

She flipped in the air just as the targets braked, throwing the Soldier from the roof and onto the causeway. He gouged his metal fingers into the road, halting his momentum. Slowly, precisely, he stood to face the targets. Civilian cars continued to drive on either side, leaving the Soldier a lone, metal-armed figure facing the stationary car.

The targets stared at the inscrutable Winter Soldier, then recoiled at the sight of the Wyvern, wings outstretched, plunging through the air toward them with an automatic gun in each hand. She blew over the Soldier's head, gusting his lank hair, and fired into the vehicle, landing six shots on – a red, white and blue shield.

But she'd distracted the targets from the strike van. It slammed into the rear of the car and propelled them toward the Soldier, who somersaulted onto the roof. The Wyvern corkscrewed in the air, increasing input to her wings so she could catch up with the vehicles again.

"Wyvern," the Soldier grunted, before he ripped the targets' steering wheel out through the windshield, and dove off the side of the car. She caught him, gripping the back of his combat suit and lifting him away from the bullets erupting from the car's roof.

"Eliminate the vehicle," the Soldier told their handlers. The assets soared in tandem with the screeching vehicles as the strike vehicle bumped the targets' car, sending it careening to the side of the causeway and flipping into a tumble of metal and glass.

The Wyvern flared her wings, catching the air in her carbon fiber webbing and dropping down to land by the braking strike vehicle.

The causeway was a mess of strewn car parts, but she could see that the targets had survived. There were three of them: the male and female targets, and a man who must have been the veteran, Wilson. The Wyvern released the back of the Soldier's combat suit, and he accepted a grenade launcher from the strike team. As he lifted it to fire she jetted back into the sky, pulling out another automatic weapon. The wind screamed in her ears and her heart was pumping, but she was cold and focused on the mission.

The Soldier landed a shot on the male target, catapulting him off the causeway. The Wyvern observed the resulting bus collision and resolved to confirm target elimination momentarily. For now, she had two more targets to eliminate.

As the strike team sprayed a hail of bullets at the cars strewn on the causeway, the Wyvern soared over the targets, raining fire from above. The targets were fast, clearly accustomed to avoiding aerial fire. They ducked and weaved from cover to cover, using the parked cars to absorb the bullets.

The veteran, seeing the Wyvern bearing down on him, actually leaped into a crashed minivan to avoid her shots, then rolled out the other side. She couldn't land, else she risk being caught in the fire from the strike team, so she soared back and forth over the causeway, trying to get a clean shot.

She caught a flash of red hair out of the corner of her eye and rolled to avoid the female target's pistol fire. When she banked out of the roll the female target was leaping off the causeway, followed by a flaming car.

"Wyvern, find the third guy!" called her handler, and she pulled into a sharp turn, gliding over the debris on the causeway. The veteran had hidden himself somewhere, using the female target's explosive exit from the causeway as a distraction. The Wyvern circled the causeway, narrowing her eyes. The veteran was in a tactically impossible position, and soon he'd run out of cover. The Wyvern would be ready.

Over the comms she heard the whining sound of a bullet impacting, and on instinct looked over her shoulder. The Soldier was sitting behind the shelter of the concrete bollard, touching his goggles. As she watched, he tore off the cracked goggles and leapt up, spraying shots at the street below. The Wyvern was startled by the anger she saw in his form, but forced herself to look away. She rained shots into the parked cars, hoping to drive the secondary target out of hiding.

" _U menya yest' ona,_ " [" _I have her,_ "]said the Soldier. " _Nayti yego_." [" _Find him._ "]

So the male target was still alive, then. The Soldier leaped off the bridge, tracking down the female target, and the strike team followed, encouraging an agent named Douglass to "light up the bus".

The Wyvern had been ordered to find the veteran, though. So she complied.

She finally spotted him as Douglass's heavy machine gun roared to life, when he stabbed a strike team agent on the causeway and relieved him of his gun. He moved  _fast_.

The Wyvern cut her engines and dove towards the veteran, hoping he wouldn't notice her until too late, but he'd already spun around and fired a round of bullets into the sky. She veered to the side, feeling bullets scream past her goggles.

"Wyvern, help us!" It was Douglass, shouting over the roar of his weapon and the screams of the strike team.

 _The male target_. She recalled the many warnings crowding his file, and flared her wings. She soared up, away from the veteran, and flipped backwards so she careened over the edge of the causeway.

She righted herself under the shadow of the bridge just as the male target charged Douglass, deflecting the bullets from the machine gun with that red, white and blue shield. The target flipped over Douglass's head and smashed him into the roof of the car.  _Should have gone for the legs_ , the Wyvern thought, and then she attacked.

The target had just jumped behind what he thought was the shelter of the car when the Wyvern swooped on him, heel spurs snapping out and aimed straight for his head.

No normal man would have had time to avoid being speared in the eye, but the target jerked to the side, crying out, and threw his shield at her. It missed, but bounced right off the underside of the bridge and back into his hands.

The Wyvern flipped in the air, gunned her engines to stay aloft, and fired at him with her revolver. The target blocked the shots with the shield and then  _leaped_. The Wyvern hardly had time to marvel at the height he reached before she felt the target's warm grip on the edge of her wing, and crashed to the ground. The tarmac crunched under her enhanced body, and the breath rushed out of her lungs.

It was the first time she'd ever been plucked out of the air, but the Wyvern didn't hesitate. She rolled with the fall and flicked her heel spurs at the target's chest, but he flipped backwards and tossed the shield at her. Teeth gritted, the Wyvern threw up her wing to block the metal disc, and her eyes widened at the resulting  _clang_. The force of the throw knocked her backwards, out from under the shadow of the bridge.

She looked at her left wing, and saw that the shield had  _dented_  the Adamantium skeleton. She looked back up at the target, eyes wide behind her red goggles. She tried to recall the details of the man's shield from his file, but she'd been looking for potential safehouses and allies, not what his weapon was made of. The target caught his shield again.

She was pulled out of her surprise by a burst of gunfire from above – she'd been thrown out of the cover of the bridge, and now the veteran had her in his sights again. She threw herself to the side, wrapping her wings around her body and rolling.

"Go, I got this!" called the veteran, and she heard the male target sprint up the road and away from her.

Jaw clenched, the Wyvern straightened from her roll and whipped two more guns from her back, firing them up at the bridge. But the veteran had already ducked for cover.

She was starting to understand the Soldier's anger, but hers was tempered with something that she thought might be respect.

She bunched her muscles and sprang from the roadway, firing up her engines to get her the last few feet to the bridge. The comms were silent, save for the sounds of the Soldier engaged in a fight somewhere down the road. The bodies of the strike team littered the roadway.

The veteran had vanished again. She stood alone on the causeway, hot tarmac under her feet and adrenaline coursing through her veins. She gritted her teeth and reached up to turn the thermal vision of her goggles on, when engines roared behind her. Turning, she saw the veteran soaring into the sky, a pair of sleek grey wings strapped to his back.

If the Wyvern wasn't a weapon, she might have exclaimed at the sight of the man flying above her, wings outstretched. His wings were narrower than hers, made of metal plates instead of the larger skeleton-and-webbing structure of her own, but he was a blur as he flew into the sun, blinding her.

The Wyvern was a weapon, however, and she instantly reacted to the change of play. She flipped backwards off the causeway again, snapping out her wings. She looped under the bridge and hurtled back into the sky, spinning to get the Falcon – because that was what he was – in her sights. They fired at each other, soaring in parallel arcs, and simultaneously rolled away from the other's shots.

The Falcon knew how to use his wings. They swerved and rolled around each other in the sky, exchanging shots and using the bridge and surrounding buildings for cover. The Wyvern knew she had more weapons than he did, that she could outfly him if given enough time, but she was conscious of the mission – she could hear the Soldier in combat with the male target now, and there'd been no confirmation on the female target's elimination. They were the mission, not this – admittedly skilled – soldier.

She veered downward, feinting a dive at the Falcon. When he accelerated away to avoid it, she pulled out of the dive and instead raced down the street, casting her gaze about for the targets.

She'd just cleared the corner of a pillared sandstone building when she spotted a flash of metal out of the corner of her eye – the Soldier had just tossed the male target over the bonnet of a car. She twisted her wings, trying to turn onto their street, but the Falcon had caught up with her. He slammed his boots into the small of her back, throwing her off-course and through the windows of a nearby office building.

The Wyvern smashed through glass, wooden beams, office equipment and finally through a plaster wall, the objects breaking against her Adamantium spine. Slumping against the floor, she groaned and pulled a shard of wood out of the back of her thigh.

_The mission._

She heaved herself to her feet.

Gunfire spurted into the office, fired by the Falcon, who hovered outside the hole she'd put in the wall of the building. She dove into the next room then ran to the nearest window, rotating her wings to ensure they hadn't been damaged in the impact.

At the window she sighted the female target on the road, propped up against the rear end of a car with blood seeping from her shoulder. The Wyvern was about to hurl herself out of the window to land on the target when the sounds of fighting over the comm stilled.

"… Bucky?"

The Wyvern froze. That was the male target's voice, and he'd been fighting with the Soldier just a second ago. She peered out the window, finally spotting the male target and the Soldier facing each other in the centre of the intersection. The Soldier had lost his mask. There wasn't anyone named Bucky in the files. Who was he-

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

The Soldier lifted his weapon, and the Wyvern thought  _no–_  but then he was knocked to the ground by the Falcon. In the same moment, the comms crackled to life:

"Wyvern, Soldier, bug out. We've got them surrounded."

The order was almost a relief. The Wyvern launched herself through the window, just as the female target hoisted a grenade launcher and fired at the Soldier. The Wyvern rolled in mid-air, hitting the grenade aside with a wingtip, seized the wild-eyed Soldier by the back of his suit and rocketed away. The targets flinched at the grenade's explosion and lost sight of the assets in the smoke. Moments later they were surrounded by Rumlow and the STRIKE team, with fresh vehicles and weapons.

Soaring toward the nearest available vehicle, the Winter Soldier and the Wyvern were silent. She could sense his turmoil and confusion, as if it were radiating from his body and into hers.

When they landed and appropriated a parked van, the assets were both thinking the same thing:  _Who the hell is Bucky?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, in the movie the Winter Soldier just *appears* on the roof of their car. How did he get there? Leapt from a STRIKE van that was hundreds of metres away?
> 
> Helps to have a Wyvern around.
> 
> I don't know why the Soldier would speak in Russian on the causeway – if he's working with a US-based team, surely he would default to the language that they spoke? My prevailing theory is that Natasha had just pissed him off, and that emotion brought him back to some of his worse moments in Russia. Idk. It's probably just the Russo brothers trying to make him seem scarier.
> 
> Also, for comparison, the Wyvern’s wings are larger than the Falcon’s, and are shaped like batwings or dragon wings, where the Falcon’s wings are more birdlike. Size wise hers are a little more like the Vulture’s wings (from Spider-Man: Homecoming), but able to retract down to the size of a backpack.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a little early because I love you guys :)
> 
> I’ve just realized I haven’t really explained my update schedule – I post chapters twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. At the rate I’m going that’s a schedule I can definitely sustain, so yay for everyone!

STRIKE van, Washington D.C.

“It was him. He looked right at me. And he didn’t even know me.”

Beaten, covered in dirt and aching from the fight, Steve stared at the floor of the van. Sitwell’s death, the STRIKE team, the red-eyed Wyvern; none of it mattered – _it was Bucky._

Sam spoke, still hyped up from the fight. “How’s that even possible? It was like seventy years ago.”

“Zola.” The pieces came together too easily in his mind. “Bucky’s whole unit was captured in ’43, Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall.” He lifted his head. “They must have found him.”

Natasha’s eyes were drooping. “None of that’s your fault, Steve,” she slurred.

He looked down again and sighed. “Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.”

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

Sam shook his head. “Then who’s his friend with the laser eyes?” Before anyone answered, though, Sam spotted the oozing hole in Natasha’s shoulder. “We need to get a doctor here, we don’t put pressure on that wound she’s going to bleed out here in the truck-”

Maria Hill came to the rescue.

 

* * *

 

 

Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

_The targets had escaped._

That was what the Wyvern gleaned from the pissed-off expressions and angry mutterings around her. Dusk was beginning to fall over the city when she and the Soldier arrived back at the bank, silent and bruised from the fight.

Now he sat in the chair while a technician worked on his arm, repairing the damage that the male target’s strange shield had done. The Wyvern had sat still while a scientist bandaged the puncture wound in her leg, and she was now hunched over her detached wings, repairing the damage.

But she wasn’t truly concentrating on any of that. While seemingly peering at a bullet hole in the webbing of her wing, she watched the Soldier. His bare chest rose and fell steadily, but she could see the turmoil in his blue-grey eyes. She could almost feel the memories crowding at the front of his mind. They filled his eyes with pain.

 _Don’t show it_ , she wanted to tell him. She didn’t even know what it was she wanted him to hide, only that it was vital that he do so.

Thee man from the bridge had done this.

_Bucky?_

The Wyvern ran a finger over the dent in the Adamantium skeleton of her left wing. The man who had done that had put the roiling confusion in the Soldier’s eyes.

_Bucky?_

The man had phrased it as a question, but his voice had been soft – so strange to hear in the midst of a battle. It had been soft with recognition.

The Wyvern brought her soldering iron to a gash in the carbon fibre, still eyeing the Soldier.

_Bucky?_

Could it be that the weapon had a name? Not just a name: a name that existed outside of a file, a name that could bring such softness to a target’s voice.

The target was still alive – what would he say, if he saw the Soldier again?

The Soldier’s head jerked to the side, and his fists clenched. The Wyvern tensed.

A second later the Soldier’s face twisted in a snarl and he struck out, knocking the technician to the edge of the room. He straightened in his chair, chest heaving.

The Wyvern stood, dropping her soldering iron, as every agent in the vault cocked their guns and aimed them at the Soldier. The Soldier looked through his dark hair at the Wyvern, his grey-blue eyes sparking with anger. His whole body was tense, as if he was about to rip out of his restraints and attack every inhabitant of the vault.

She stared back, trying to somehow tell him to _stand down._ But he was beyond her reach now, eyes flicking around at the alert STRIKE team.

Rollins, the secondary STRIKE leader, put a finger to his earpiece. “Call the Director.”

 

It was a tense wait for the Director, every gun in the bank trained on the Soldier while the Wyvern stood frozen in the corner. She wanted an _order_.

Finally, her enhanced ears picked up on an interruption to the harried conversation the handlers were having outside:

“Sir? He’s-he’s unstable… erratic…”

The vault door opened, revealing the Director and Rumlow. The Director made a motion for the STRIKE team to stand down and back away. The Wyvern’s muscles loosened slightly.

“Mission report,” said the Director.

The Soldier wasn’t a weapon right now. His body was still tense, but he’d sat back down and his muscles weren’t bunched in preparation for a fight. The Wyvern recognised the look on his face: shock.

“Mission report, _now_.”

The Wyvern couldn’t stand the Soldier’s silence. She spoke up: “The targets were engaged on-”

“Not you,” the Director snapped, not even glancing over his shoulder at her. She clenched her jaw.

In the silence that followed, the Director stepped up to the Soldier and leaned over. She couldn’t see his face.

The Director struck the Soldier. The Wyvern dug her gauntlet’s claws into her palm and felt blood ooze from her skin. She’d seen men killed today, why should a single blow affect her like this?

The Soldier’s gaze focused, and he frowned. “The man on the bridge… who was he?”

“You met him earlier this week, on another assignment.”

The Wyvern knew that this was true, but something inside her was shouting _lie._

The Soldier’s gaze slid to the back of the vault, to where the Wyvern was frozen in the corner. “I knew him,” he said. His eyes were bright.

The Wyvern couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She tried to recall everything she knew about the man on the bridge, but all she remembered was where the man might go to hide, and his skill in a fight. How could the Soldier know him?

The Director took a seat in front of the Soldier and began placating him. The Wyvern didn’t hear a word – her mind was racing, trying to find the connection between the Winter Soldier and the man on the bridge. She watched the Soldier’s face move from confusion, to fear, and finally to resignation. Her stomach dropped.

“But I knew him,” he murmured, and his face twisted with the knowledge of what was about to happen. The Wyvern pressed her claws deeper into her palm.

The Director stood and gave orders to their handlers to wipe the Soldier and start over. The Wyvern watched the Soldier’s face fall, and she wanted to move towards him. She wanted to _help_. The instinct startled her – none of this was a part of her programming. She shouldn’t care.

The handlers pushed the Soldier back into the chair. _Bucky,_ she thought. _Bucky, Bucky, Bucky._ Her heart was pounding.

As they put the mouthguard in his mouth and clamped his limbs, she met his gaze.

 _You are my mission_ , she mouthed, not knowing how or why she said it. Recognition sparked in the Soldier’s eyes. The machine whirred into life and he tensed, his chest rising and falling. He was shaking.

_I’ll remember for him._

The sparking metal plates connected with his face, and he screamed. The Wyvern didn’t look away.

 

The Director turned and flicked a finger at the Wyvern. She tore her eyes away from the Soldier and fell into step behind him, matching Rumlow’s strides as they walked out of the room. She felt small without her wings.

Once they’d left the vault, leaving the Soldier’s screams behind them, Pierce turned to face the Wyvern. He scanned her blank face.

“Mission report.”

She gave it. Her voice was blank, cold, a smooth undercurrent against the screams from the vault. She detailed the whole engagement, but didn’t mention the name she’d heard.

_Bucky?_

Pierce nodded and turned to Rumlow. “Did the Wyvern malfunction?”

“No sir,” Rumlow replied, his eyes dark. “She followed orders.”

“Well that’s a mercy,” the Director said, his face terse and lined. “Wyvern, remain here. We’ll call in the assets when it’s time.”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was cold like winter air, hollow like a dead tree.

She watched, rooted to the spot, as the Director and the STRIKE team left the facility. The Soldier’s screams echoed through the bank, seeping into the Wyvern’s lungs and settling there, a heavy weight in her chest.

 _I’ll remember_ , she told herself. But she didn’t know why. Her mind was a snowstorm.

 

* * *

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. Dam Facility, Undisclosed Location

Once they’d hashed out their plan, Steve left the room. Fury, Hill, Natasha and Sam settled back in their seats, contemplating the weight of what they had to do. Fury’s one good eye was closed.

Natasha broke the silence. “You ever hear about the Wyvern, Hill?”

Hill shrugged. “Rumours, nothing concrete though. Why?”

“She’s in play – one of HYDRA’s operatives.”

Sam huffed. “See, when you told me about a chick with red goggles carting around another wing pack, I don’t think I really believed you. My pack’s supposed to be the last one.”

Natasha shook her head. “The Wyvern’s been around longer than you, Sam. And her wings are a completely different design to yours.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” he shook his head. “I felt more like a pigeon up against her, I was lucky she was gunning for you two. Is she as old as the Winter Soldier? Could she be, I don’t know, a World War Two nurse or something?”

Fury opened his eye. “I didn’t think she really existed, but the stories I’ve heard only go back the last twenty years or so. If that.”

Sam scoffed. “Oh, she’s real alright.”

“She could be anyone,” Natasha said, answering Sam’s original question. “A HYDRA agent who volunteered for enhancements, maybe.”

“Whoever she is,” Hill cut in, “she’s on HYDRA’s side, and she’s going to try to stop us saving lives. You see her, you take her out.”

Natasha nodded, and winced as the movement pulled her wound. “I get the feeling that taking down Barnes is going to be a little more complicated.” She turned in her chair, eyeing Sam.

Sam nodded, and looked at the door Steve had just walked through. “I’ll go talk to him.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Whoever he used to be, the guy he is now – I don’t think he’s the kind you save. He’s the kind you stop.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“He might not give you a choice… he doesn’t know you.”

“He will.”

 

* * *

 

 

January 12th, 2014  
Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Washington D.C.

“There’s trouble with Insight, and the Director’s called for all hands at the Triskelion. Bring the assets.”

The Wyvern got to her feet. She’d been at the facility all night, repairing her wings and combing through the armoury. She hadn’t seen the Soldier since she left him in the chair, but she had thought of little else throughout the night. She knew that he was her mission, and she knew the name: _Bucky_. But she didn’t understand the fragments of her mind – why was the Soldier her mission? Why was it important that she remember?

“Wyvern! Let’s go!”

The technician behind the Wyvern slotted her wings into her back, and then stepped aside. She got to her feet and followed the flood of agents from the facility, climbing into one of the strike vehicles. _The mission. The mission is…_

At the last moment before they left, the Winter Soldier climbed into the vehicle. He didn’t have his goggles or his muzzle – she supposed they were among the debris on the causeway.

She watched him from behind her scarlet goggles as he took his seat. He was back in his combat suit, with a new range of weapons secured around his body. His hair was loose around his cheeks and his face was utterly, completely blank.

 _Bucky_?

The vehicles peeled away from the bank, screeching through traffic toward the Triskelion. As they drove, the Wyvern watched the vacant Soldier and battered at the blurry limits of her thoughts.

“The mission is to protect Project Insight,” Rollins barked, looking around at the agents in the vehicle. “Eliminate anyone acting against the Project.”

Disturbed by the chaos of her mind, the Wyvern did the one thing that made sense. She complied.

 

The Triskelion, Washington D.C.

The vehicles screeched to a halt and flung their doors open just as the first Helicarrier rose into the sky. The roar of the engines washed over the Wyvern, and her eyes widened as she took in the enormous metal aircraft, prickling with guns and its turbines glowing blue. As she watched, two other Helicarriers launched from the subterranean hangars.

The HYDRA vans had arrived on the other side of the Triskelion, so the open hangars were concealed from view, but the newly arrived agents had a perfect view of the bloody and screaming S.H.I.E.L.D. employees fleeing from the building. Civilians and non-combatants looked over their shoulders as they streamed out of the glass doors. They either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the black vans crowding the entrance, as they didn’t spare a glance for the agents or the assets while they ran for their lives.

Abruptly, the Wyvern’s commpiece was connected to the HYDRA agents’ channel and she took a second to adjust to the terse calls for assistance and reports from HYDRA dispatch. She climbed out of the van after the Winter Soldier, and they faced their handlers.

Rollins turned to the assets. “Rumlow’s team has the situation in the Triskelion pretty much handled. Cripple any support that Captain America has on the ground or in the air, and make sure that-”

The dispatcher’s voice came over the comms: “ _We’ve got engagement on IN-03_.”

Rollins paused, hand flying to his earpiece, and spun around. The Wyvern and the Soldier looked up at the third Helicarrier, already hundreds of feet off the ground. A faint plume of smoke erupted from its deck, and their enhanced ears caught the sound of gunfire and explosions over the roar of the engines. A winged silhouette rose above the line of the hangars and spun as the Helicarrier cannons fired at it.

The Falcon. He was an agile flyer, evading the cannon fire by swooping low to the Helicarrier and then rocketing upwards, a graceful bird amongst plumes of black smoke and orange flame.

Rollins cursed, his face darkening. He turned back to the assets. “Soldier, ground their air support. Wyvern – go after the flyer.”

They complied. The Soldier stalked into the trees surrounding the building, and the Wyvern snapped her wings open and soared into the air. If she spared a glance down at the Soldier’s black combat suit and metal arm, she told herself it was to ensure mission progression.

 _He is my mission_.

She shook the thought away.

 

* * *

 

 

“Falcon, status?”

“Engaging!”

Sam plunged through the sky towards the Helicarrier, outstripping cannon fire and swerving around gun turrets. He swooped on a HYDRA agent, kicked him in the chest, and spun to fire at another agent. When they crumpled to the ground he hovered, checking the deck was clear.

“Alright, Cap, I’m in.” He scanned the deck, searching for a way in.

Before he could make his next move, however, he heard a whine of jet engines and looked up to see a familiar pair of black wings rising from below the lip of the deck. The Wyvern’s goggles glowed red, and Sam focused on the semi-automatic guns in her clawed hands.   
“… _Shit_.” He flipped over, gunning his wingpack to flee along the deck, weaving under the wings of the grounded Quinjets.

She was hot on his heels, raining down gunfire as she jetted after him. Sam swore under his breath, trying to get eyes on the Wyvern even as he desperately avoided her fire.

He’d never gone up against someone with wings like his before yesterday, and it was a nightmare. Planes and infantry he could predict and avoid, an assassin with metal wings and deadly aim was another matter. Her shots were inches from his exposed legs and chest, sparking against the deck.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shot hit the fuel tank of the last Quinjet, and it went up in flames. The shock wave kicked him in the back and he cried out, retracting his wings and tumbling to a halt on the edge of the carrier.

Sam rolled to his feet just in time to see the Wyvern bearing down on him, metal wings splayed and guns ablaze. Heart in his mouth, he threw himself backwards off the Helicarrier, firing back at the Wyvern as she rocketed over him. One of his shots connected with the gun in her left hand, which tumbled past his face as he fell.

Sam’s wings snapped open and he soared under the hull of the Helicarrier, but he hadn’t thrown the Wyvern off. Her engines roared like a hungry predator as she pursued him in the shadow of the Helicarrier, a new gun already in her hands.

As he flew, he was distantly aware of Romanoff verbally sparring with Alexander Pierce, and grinned breathlessly when Cap’s voice announced: “Alpha lock!”

But then he heard a new engine sound, and looked over his shoulder to see a Quinjet joining the Wyvern in the sky. The Wyvern seamlessly adjusted to her new ally, careering to the side to try to cut Sam off. _Shit._

“Falcon?” came Hill’s voice over the comm. “Where are you now?”

Sam converted more power to his engines. “Had to take a detour!” he called, rolling away from the Wyvern when she tried to pin him against the hull of the Helicarrier, and then flipping to avoid the Quinjet’s ceaseless fire. He cursed at the familiar sound of missiles launching. Well, at least those would keep the Wyvern off his ass for a little while. He banked his wings and shot toward the Helicarrier, the whine of the missiles filling his ears.

The manoeuvre worked – out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the redirected missiles catch the Quinjet’s wing, sending it into a smoking downward spiral, and the Wyvern soared upwards and away to flee the other projectiles.

Sam retracted his wings, spinning into a ball, and the rest of the missiles collided with the huge glass dome at the bottom of the Helicarrier, opening the perfect doorway.

“Oh yeah,” he crowed, as he twisted back into flight mode and soared into the Insight dome. He landed on the metal catwalk, heart pounding. _I’m the boss._ “I’m in.”

Sam installed the chip as Hill had instructed – he could hardly forget, after having to prove five times to her that he knew how to do it – and called “Bravo lock!” as he leaped off the catwalk. He didn’t have a second to react before the red-eyed Wyvern hurtled into the Helicarrier, caught him mid-leap, and slammed him down against the glass dome.

 

* * *

 

The Falcon didn’t know what hit him until he was staring into the Wyvern’s red goggles, his wings pinned by hers and her enhanced strength holding him against the glass.

The Wyvern was calm, despite the Falcon’s skilful evasions and the ill-advised missile launch from the HYDRA Quinjet. She’d tracked her prey, and now she’d caught him.

The Falcon cried out at the force of her grip, his face creasing with pain.

 _Eliminate anyone acting against the Project._ The Wyvern brought her clawed gauntlet over the man’s face. He kicked and struggled, but the Wyvern had been made strong. She kept him where he was, and prepared to eliminate him.

But this man had been on the bridge with the male target who gave the Soldier a name. He fought for him, fled with him. This man knew about the other one. She considered him; his screwed up face, his desperate efforts to free himself from her powerful grip. Behind his head, the Triskelion and the wide river were visible through the glass. From here, it looked like nothing was wrong. Wind shrieked through the open crater in the Insight dome.

Her handlers hadn’t said to _immediately_ eliminate anyone acting against the Project _._ She shifted her grip, bringing her forearm to the Falcon’s throat, and filled his vision with her red goggles and black cowl. She needed to _know_ – about the man on the bridge, about the Soldier, about the mission.

“Do you-” she started to say, her voice muffled by her cowl, but then hesitated when the Winter Soldier’s voice came over the commpiece.

“Wyvern, request airlift to _IN-03_.”

The Wyvern froze, her forearm still pressing into the Falcon’s throat. She barely felt the man’s fist as it fought free and pummelled into her metal-reinforced ribs. The Soldier’s voice was so _cold._

It was the first time she’d heard him speak since his conversation with the Director last night, and the difference was… unsettling. Last night his voice had been low, almost broken, but now there was no hint of emotion. No hint of _recognition._ The background sounds from his commpiece were chaos: screams, gunfire, explosions. The Wyvern’s breath caught in her chest.

Taking advantage of her distraction, the Falcon managed to free a backup pistol from his hip. Thunder reverberated between them and the Wyvern flinched back, blood spraying from the bullet hole in her side and splashing onto the Falcon’s uniform.

He’d only skimmed her, but it was enough. The Falcon kicked her off, snapped open his wings and dove out of the Helicarrier, engines roaring.

The Wyvern didn’t follow. She rose to her feet, balancing on the bottom of the glass dome with her hand pressed against her bleeding side, but she didn’t even watch the Falcon as he fled her clutches.

 _Malfunction_ , came a voice in her mind, but it was distant. The Wyvern’s thoughts were caught on the Soldier’s cold voice. The sound of it brought the image of empty blue-grey eyes to her mind, flickering with a reflection of fire. But yesterday his eyes hadn’t been empty. She’d seen the Soldier’s turmoil, his pain, she’d seen him _remember_ and she’d seen him pay the price for remembering.

 _Bucky?_ That man yesterday had belonged to a name. What did he have now?

 _The mission_.

The Wyvern’s wings drooped, hanging loose from her back. She stared at the river below, unseeing, as the snowstorm of her mind raged and undulated. _The mission. The mission._

_Bucky?_

The comm crackled again, but this time it was HYDRA dispatch. “Wyvern, Soldier, the Falcon and Captain America are heading for _IN-01_ , head them off.”

The Wyvern’s heart was pounding. With every second of inaction she was disobeying so many orders, disobeying her very programming. The sounds of screaming and gunshots over the comms echoed in her mind, and the Wyvern flinched at images she didn’t remember: burning, pain, targets in their beds.

_Malfunction._

The Wyvern stumbled and dropped to her knees, smearing the blood from her gunshot wound on the glass. Her breath was coming fast, and she couldn’t seem to stop her mind from whirling and seething, flickering with long-past images and sounds. She couldn’t stop her mind, couldn’t catch onto a single thought and hold on. She was lost; her very self a helpless piece of debris in an uncontrollable ocean. Fire and blood filled her nostrils, making her reel.

Gasping, the Wyvern pressed her fingers into the stinging wound on her ribcage, clinging to the sharp pain that erupted. It helped to focus her thoughts somewhat, but that only brought back the renewed screaming of her programming to _comply_ , and a deeper instinct that called to _remember_. There was a piercing pain behind her eyes, bringing spots to her vision. It felt like lightning, like the chair.

Suddenly, she heard a faint voice over the comms: “People are gonna die, Buck. I can’t let that happen.”

It was the Soldier’s commpiece. The Wyvern sucked in a long breath, and slammed her fist into the glass below her. Spiderweb cracks erupted from her hand. She focused on breathing, and parsed what she’d just heard. It was the man from the bridge’s voice.

 _So that’s his mission_ , she thought, pressing her eyes shut. _To keep people from dying_.

It was such an unfamiliar mission to the Wyvern, but he found herself drawn to it.

“Please don’t make me do this.”

The Wyvern’s eyes snapped open. Seconds later, she heard grunts, the clang of metal, and gunshots – the unmistakeable sound of the Soldier fighting.

The Wyvern got her feet under her and straightened, her mind racing. Her mind was still a raging storm, but she was focused now – she didn’t let it overwhelm her.

Her programming called to her to _comply with the mission._ But there was more than one mission in the Wyvern’s head. There was _protect Project Insight_ , but there was also _you are my mission._ And now she knew the man on the bridge’s mission. He’d recognised the Soldier, but if the noises over the comm were anything to go by, he would follow his mission above everything else. As she listened to the Soldier fight, the Wyvern’s genius brain computed the situation.

There were two outcomes. The first was that Project Insight was protected, the man on the bridge’s mission failed, and he was eliminated. The second was that Project Insight was not protected, the man on the bridge’s mission succeeded, and the Soldier was eliminated.

 _He is my mission._ The Wyvern stumbled again, and gripped her cowl in her fists. _Protect Project Insight._ The missions were clashing in her head, fuelled by half-remembered images of death and blood and flickering grey-blue eyes.

Her mind was reeling. She had analysed the situation, she knew the outcomes. She had her orders. If she didn’t protect Project Insight, the man on the bridge might kill the Winter Soldier. She pictured the Soldier’s grey-blue eyes empty of everything, including life, and her stomach churned.

 _It shouldn’t matter_ , she told herself. The Soldier was an asset, a weapon. Weapons were disposable. But she remembered a warm hand on her back, rubbing soothing circles. She remembered his flickering eyes and their secrets, remembered the way she’d trusted him so implicitly, like an extension of her own self, and she remembered him saying _but I knew him._

If she did protect Project Insight, then she would have to kill the man on the bridge. The man who knew the name. The man whose voice could go soft in the middle of a battle. Or she would have to let the Soldier kill him, kill the one person who might know him as more than a weapon. If she carried out that mission, then she would be left with unanswered questions, an empty-eyed Soldier, and then the chair. But that was her programming _._ She must comply.

She couldn’t even remember where she’d gotten the other mission, but she couldn’t push it away despite the sharp ache it brought to her chest. _He is my mission. He is my mission._ It was embedded in her psyche, deeper than memory and pain and programming.

Her missions were at odds. Her programming told her to ask a superior for clarification, but a deeper part of her asked: _which is more important?_

The Wyvern shivered, her sightless eyes fixed on the glimmering river hundreds of feet below. Blood oozed from the wound in her side, and her face was sweaty and flushed under her cowl. Her heart raced.

 _Important._ Her programming said that the only thing of any importance was her orders, overriding herself and her victims and her fellow asset. But when she asked herself which mission to follow, she heard the name.

 _Bucky. Bucky. Bucky._ It no longer sounded like the man on the bridge’s soft voice. She heard her own voice now, low and shivering:

“Bucky,” she murmured.

The utterance brought a new memory exploding to the front of her mind:

_Your name is Margaret._

The Wyvern’s head jerked up, and the world filtered back in. The pain in her side, the sounds of fighting in the distance and over her comms, the hum of her engines. In three strides she covered the distance to the crater in the glass dome, dove through it, and soared into the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, what was a Quinjet engaging the Falcon in the movie became the Wyvern, sue me. 
> 
> Don’t forget to kudos, comment and subscribe! Your comments give me life <3


	14. Chapter 14

_The mission_.

The Wyvern rocketed toward  _IN-03_ , swooping below the weapons array and peering into the glass dome. It was empty. She made two circuits to be sure, but she didn't think she'd miss the Soldier and the man on the bridge fighting each other. The wide river glittered below her, and the cold winds of the higher altitude nipped at the edges of her goggles.

Over the comms she could hear continuing gunshots, growls and the whir of the Soldier's metal arm. She wondered how the man on the bridge hadn't died yet. They must have been very evenly matched.

As she peeled away from  _IN-03_  she had a realisation: she'd only ever used the comms to report mission status and request backup or vehicles. But she heard a pained groan – the man on the bridge, she thought – and knew she had to act.

"Soldier, stand down!" she called. There was no response. She knew it wasn't likely to work, but she'd had to try.

Seconds later, she heard: "Drop it!" Followed by a  _crack_ and a howl.

The Wyvern went cold, and her wings faltered. That had been the Soldier's scream. It brought back echoes of his screams from last night, but he wasn't in the chair now. The man on the bridge had done that.

The Wyvern gritted her teeth and prepared to push her wings to their limits, but at that moment two Quinjets rose into her peripheral vision. She had barely a second to react before they fired at her. With the roar of gunfire overriding the sounds of fighting in her comms, the Wyvern flared her wings to halt her acceleration, and fell behind the Quinjets. They reacted quickly though, spinning in mid-air and turning their guns on her once again.

Either S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on the ground had found some undamaged Quinjets or there had been some non-HYDRA agents on the Helicarriers. Either way, someone had got a hold of two of the deadliest jets in the sky and were gunning for her.

The Wyvern banked seamlessly into evasive manoeuvres, rolling and weaving and using one Quinjet as cover against the other. She'd been trained in this for years, but she didn't have time for it – she couldn't distinguish the Soldier in amongst all the other operatives' commlinks now, and that concerned her far more than the scream.

For a moment the Wyvern considered just flying head-on at the Quinjets and shearing off their wings with her stronger Adamantium wings, but she was still turning over the man on the bridge's mission in her mind:  _People are going to die. I can't let that happen._

She wasn't sure why she was still thinking about it, but something inside her told her it was something to consider. So she didn't move straight towards annihilation. Instead she made close passes against the Quinjets, avoiding their weapons and trying to shove her heel spurs into one of the functioning engines. That would ground the S.H.I.E.L.D. air forces and allow her to carry out her mission.

She saw pale, hard faces every time she soared over the cockpits. Finally she drove her spurs into the left wing turbine of one of the Quinjets, and pulled away as it dipped and fell into a controlled spiral to the treetops below. She set her sights on the second Quinjet and gunned her engines.

"Wyvern, report!" came a terse voice over the comms. Rumlow. "41st floor, come help me take out the trash." Rumlow continued talking, monologuing about pain and order, and the Wyvern realised that he was talking to someone else – an ally of the man on the bridge, perhaps. Though it made her heart pound, the Wyvern ignored the direct order, and continued trying to ground the Quinjet.

The pilot had realised what she was trying to do, and every time she got close he swerved aside. After a few failed passes, and after almost being blown out of the sky by a missile, she lobbed a grenade into the Quinjet's turbine. After a very loud and bright explosion the Quinjet went down, a bit faster than the other one but still slow enough to ensure the crew survived.

In that moment, the Helicarriers seemed to come to life. The weapons arrays on each carrier clunked into position, guns rotating toward targets the Wyvern couldn't see. They were three thousand feet in the air now, the deep blue river below winding through green parks and the distant sprawl of buildings. The Triskelion hangars stretched below the Wyvern's dangling feet. She hesitated in the air, her engines burning and her chest heaving. She was a few hundred feet beneath the hull of the highest carrier, where she was sure the Soldier was. She suddenly recalled a computerized German voice, and an algorithm written in green code.

_You will turn his legacy to dust._

The Wyvern's breath stilled in her chest, and she wondered if Zola's algorithm would choose her, if it could tell that she had ignored her handlers' orders. Perhaps it would be easier that way. The gun turrets settled their aim, clunking into position, and she wondered how many people were about to die.

The man on the bridge's mission had failed. The Wyvern closed her eyes.

But then, instead of the boom of artillery, she heard the gun turrets moving again.

The Wyvern's eyes opened to see the Helicarrier's cannons swiveling once more, locking on to a target below. She blinked, and looked down to see the other Helicarriers aiming  _up._

For a brief moment the Wyvern wondered if the algorithm had singled  _her_  out for elimination, over all other possible targets. But then they began to fire.

The first volley launched past the Wyvern, narrowly missing her wings. Missiles and bullets screamed from one Helicarrier to the other, illuminating a fiery triangle in the sky. Glass and metal shattered, making the Helicarriers shudder in the sky and causing a rain of debris.

The Wyvern found herself caught between three enormous aircraft apparently hell bent on destroying one another. Debris and artillery tore through the air around her, scorching her skin and near-deafening her. Heart pounding, she leapt into evasive manoeuvres.

She had no way of predicting where the next missile would be; she turned one way only to be cut off by a falling hunk of burning metal, and when she swerved aside a volley of missiles screamed past her face. She had no time for thought or planning, no hope of using fancy flying to escape the tonnes of artillery tearing the air apart. She made herself as small a target as possible.

The sky was filled with fire and metal, and the Wyvern had nowhere to turn. She dove, hoping to use one of the lower two Helicarriers as cover.

As she dodged and swerved, she heard a scream over the comms – the same scream as before, one that reminded her of the chair, and lightning coursing through neurons.

"Soldier!" she called, then screamed when a large-caliber bullet ripped through her right wing, lighting up her cybernetic neurons. "Bucky!"

There was no response. She kept trying to get to  _IN-01_ but it was absolute mayhem. Cut off by a volley of cannon fire, the Wyvern tried to gun her engines and soar upwards, out of the deadly triangle the Helicarriers made, but at that moment  _IN-02_ 's engines failed, and it dropped out of the sky with a groan.

Faced with the groaning, burning hunk of metal above her and the Quinjets slipping from its deck, the Wyvern flipped her body and plunged out of the sky, outstripping the falling debris. Over her head she heard a deafening, metallic screech when the two Helicarriers collided mid-air.

The resulting shock wave pummeled the Wyvern as she dove through the sky, and her back was scorched in the explosion. Burning metal rained around her, pelting her back and filling her cowl with the stench of smoke.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder, and her eyes widened under her goggles at the sight of the Helicarrier snapping in half above her, tilting over. Her heart skipped a beat. Coupled with the horrific groaning sound, the Wyvern felt as if she was being pursued by an enormous metal beast.

She didn't have time to level out and get out of range, as she'd planned. Heart in her mouth, the Wyvern continued in the only direction available to her: down, into the open S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft hangar.

She cleared the lip of the hangar just as the Helicarrier plunged nose-deep into the retaining wall. It was the loudest thing the Wyvern had ever heard; a titanic roar of imploding metal, fuel exploding, and furious, churning water. The shock wave of it tipped her sideways in the air, and a thrill went down her Adamantium-enforced spine at the sight of the hangar wall collapsing, releasing millions of gallons of white water.

She swerved, rocketing across the open hangar as the river and pieces of Helicarrier flooded the space. An enormous spinning turbine whizzed over her head, nearly catching her shoulder. With the roaring of the river and the burning Helicarrier at her back, the Wyvern caught a glimpse of an open door to her right. She swerved again, engines screaming.

At the last moment she snapped in her wings to fit through the door, sailed into the corridor beyond and put a hole in the adjoining metal wall when she collided with it. But she didn't have time to hang out of the wall and contemplate her near escape – water was already flooding into the enclosed space, churning and filled with debris. The building around her shuddered.

The Wyvern pulled herself out of the crumpled wall, retracted her wings and ran, racing the rising flood through the subterranean corridors.

 

* * *

 

 

The Winter Soldier pulled the target out of the river. Pain scorched through his body, from his dislocated shoulder and his crushed chest, but he had the strength to carry the man out of the water and onto the riverbank.

He paused, looking down at the target on the muddy shore. The man was bruised and lacerated, with blood staining his colourful uniform, but his chest was moving. River water spilled from the target's mouth as he fought for breath.

The Soldier backed away.  _The mission: the mission is…_

He looked into the sky, but it was empty save for smoke. He remembered the other asset, the  _Wyvern,_ remembered her metal wings and red goggles and her voice over the comm system. She'd told him to stand down. She'd called him by the name:  _Bucky._

The Soldier's mind was a mess; thoughts and flickers of memories. He knew the Wyvern was important, but he couldn't remember why. The memory of her wings was tainted by blood and lightning.

The Wyvern wasn't on the comms now. The earpiece greeted him with nothing but silence. Clenching his jaw, his mind whirling with the target's voice and bloody face, and the Wyvern's silence, the Soldier turned and limped away from the riverbank.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern emerged from the bowels of the Triskelion bloody and soaking wet, with gashes in her wings and missing her cowl. She still had her red goggles, but the cowl and her earpiece had been torn off when part of the building collapsed on her. A long gash beside her ear oozed blood down her neck and into her combat suit.

She'd had to literally tear her way out of the Triskelion, pulling apart debris to get through, and at one point punched her way through the ceiling to escape the floodwater. But now she stumbled out onto the tarmac where the HYDRA vans had parked less than an hour earlier, into the mayhem of screaming civilians. Her body was aching and her skin was vibrating with left-over adrenaline from her fight through the building.

She spun around, looking into the sky, but the Helicarriers were gone. Plumes of smoke billowed from the river and the Triskelion itself, and the Wyvern could see the wreck of  _IN-03_ groaning in the middle of the river.

She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.

She'd  _failed._ She'd given up one mission to carry out the other, but in the end both had failed. Project Insight was a smoking wreck, and she'd lost the Soldier.

She hadn't heard from him since his scream while she was dodging the Helicarriers' missiles, and she'd lost her commpiece soon after crashing into the hangar.

She wondered if the Soldier had been crushed in the Helicarrier wreck, or if the man on the bridge had killed him. She pressed her eyes shut.

After a few seconds of dripping blood and river water onto the tarmac, the Wyvern trudged into the nearby wooded area, unseen by the chaotic masses. She ripped off her goggles and gauntlets, stuffed them in a pocket, then detached her wings. It was almost a relief to disconnect from the overloaded and damaged sensors.

Tucking the folded Adamantium under her arm, the Wyvern stepped back onto the tarmac and walked away from the Triskelion. In her black combat suit, she could pass as any injured S.H.I.E.L.D. agent escaping her damaged workplace. Her dark hair hung loose and dripping around her bare face, and skin peeked out from around the moorings in her back and the bullet wound in her side. Her wings were cold and heavy under her arm. She'd never been so exposed in public before, except in disguise.

The Wyvern was tired. A failure. She felt empty, far emptier than she'd been after the chair and her trigger words. She felt as if everything inside her had fallen away, leaving a burnt and hollow shell. There was no mission, not any more. And yet she was walking.

She looked up from her boots on the tarmac and considered the direction her feet were taking her.  
 _Of course._ The HYDRA facility in the city.

The Wyvern clenched her fists and doubled her pace, heading for the bank.

 

* * *

 

She didn't know what she planned to do once she got to the bank, but it turned out that whatever she'd considered had already been done. The building was on fire when she arrived, flames billowing out of the dome and the shattered windows. She paused on the street corner, stinking of river water and defeat, and watched another building fall into destruction.

She didn't know what made her turn her head. It could have been that she felt someone's eyes on her, or saw the firelight glinting off of metal. It could have just been the instincts that had helped her to survive for twenty two years. Either way, her head turned, and she found herself looking into the Winter Soldier's eyes.

He'd just climbed out of one of the bank's windows and frozen in his steps at the sight of the Wyvern. He was still soaking wet, clutching his right arm to his chest, with drying blood on his face. He had no weapons left.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier stared at each other from across the sidewalk. They both dripped blood and river water onto the concrete. Neither of them moved.

Once she'd processed what she was seeing, the breath whooshed out of the Wyvern's chest.

 _He was alive._  His grey-blue eyes were almost comically wide at the sight of her, dazzlingly bright with pain and turmoil. It reminded her of the chair, and she broke eye contact to glance at the burning bank.  _That_  chair, at least, would no longer be a concern.

When she looked back at the Soldier he still hadn't moved, but now his eyes were searching her face. She didn't know what to show him – her mind was still reeling from her memories and realisations on the Helicarrier, and she suspected she was in shock.

Their eyes narrowed as both the Wyvern and the Soldier's enhanced hearing picked up on sirens in the distance. They looked at each other for a second longer, and then the Wyvern turned and walked away. The Soldier fell into step beside her.

 

* * *

 

District of Columbia Housing Authority, Washington D.C.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier found a safe house without exchanging a word. They were both limping, their wounds slowing them down, but no complaint or request to slow down passed their lips.

On the surface, they were behaving as if they were on a normal mission – complete the objective and go to ground. But neither of them had any plans to return to their handlers.

The Wyvern led them to one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Director's safehouses that they had scoped out only three days ago – a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the red brick Housing Authority block, with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and not much else. The location was obviously compromised, but it was the closest safehouse within walking distance of the bank, and the Wyvern suspected that no one would be looking very closely at defunct safehouses while the city was burning.

They climbed up the wobbling fire escape and broke in through the window. The Wyvern checked the apartment for inhabitants and bugs while the Soldier climbed in after her. Once she was sure it was clear she placed her damaged wings on the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. She let out a slow breath.

The other chair at the table scraped on the linoleum floor. The Wyvern glanced up, eyeing the Soldier as he lowered himself onto the wooden chair on the other side of the table. He was favoring his right arm, and the Wyvern distantly thought:  _dislocated._  His wet uniform squelched on the chair.

They sat in silence for what felt like hours, staring into space. The silence in the safehouse, after the gunfire and crashing Helicarriers, felt odd but not unwelcome. The stillness was odd too, after so much action.

Now that she'd finally stopped moving, the injuries littering the Wyvern's body made themselves known. The bullet hole in her side was stinging, still oozing blood into her uniform. Her back was burned and bruised from the debris of the Helicarriers, she had an open wound beside her ear, and the puncture wound in her thigh from yesterday was aching. Her uniform was wet and sticking to her skin, and her boots were full of water.

The Soldier hissed in pain. The Wyvern glanced up to see him wincing as he tried to put his arm in a more comfortable position.

She got to her feet, but froze when he flinched. Their eyes met.

The silence between them felt thick, as if they  _should_ be speaking, but couldn't remember how. Instead of speaking the Wyvern slowly approached him, sidestepping around the rickety wooden table and approaching his right shoulder. The kitchen was narrow, barely fitting a fridge, sink, stove and table, and her hip scraped against the wall as she moved toward the Soldier. She held her palms out, the pale skin bare.

His gaze flicked from her hands to her face. He nodded.

Slowly, the Wyvern put her hands on the Soldier – one on his bicep, gripping his combat suit, and the other on his wrist, over his bare skin. That done, she met his eyes again. They rippled with pain, but he gave no indication of wanting her hands off him. He sat with his shoulders back and his chest out, and the Wyvern realized he'd done this before. The thought made her…  _sad._ She wanted to consider this new feeling, but she had a limb to focus on.

She pulled his arm out so it was in a right angle, facing forward from his body, then steadily pulled the bent limb outwards. She'd learned how to do this – sometime, somewhere. Once she met resistance she pulled the arm up slightly. There was a dull  _clunk_ , and the Soldier let out a breath. The Wyvern let go of his arm and backed away until she hit the noisy fridge. The Soldier's face was a little looser now, and he rotated his arm with a grunt.

"Do you remember?"

The words startled the Wyvern, even though she'd said them. They were shockingly loud in the small, mundane space.

The Soldier looked up, also startled, and grimaced. It was more emotion than she was used to seeing from him. "Barely." His voice was low. "I remembered… I knew I didn't want to kill him."

The man. The target. "Did you kill him?" Her aching back was pressed against the fridge, and her hands were loose at her sides.

"No. No, I… I got close. But he's… when I left him, he was alive." The Soldier struggled with the words, and his eyes darted back and forth.

"I can check for you."

His eyes flickered up, meeting hers. She could see the chaos that mention of the man brought to his eyes, but her offer seemed to ease it a little. He nodded.

The Wyvern cocked her head. "He said your name is Bucky."

The Soldier – Bucky – shook his head, exasperated. "I don't… I don't  _remember_."

"You have time."

At this reminder of their ill-begotten freedom, he frowned. He opened his mouth, shut it, then looked down at his hands. His hair dripped onto the linoleum. Eventually he whispered: "Don't… don't go back."

The Wyvern stilled, her eyes focusing on the S- on Bucky's face. He looked as exhausted as she felt; face tense, eyes downcast, wet hair lank around his face.

After a moment, she stepped away from the fridge and retook her seat at the table. "There's nothing to go back to," she replied. "Besides, you're my mission now."

His head snapped up and he scrutinised her face. Slowly, hesitantly, the Wyvern offered him a smile.

He smiled back, easy as breathing, and it made her breath catch in her chest. She remembered seeing him smile only three times before: once a ghost of a smirk, after defeating a particularly defiant target. Once a small, sad thing flashed her way before they were both wiped. Once an encouraging turn of the lips after she'd been shot out of the sky in a desert.

She remembered sensing emotions from him before - when he was concerned about her, or scared of the chair, or angry at a target. But he never displayed those emotions on his face, always a blank slate. Sometimes it seemed that only she could see the man he was, flashing for moments in his eyes. It was entirely possible that she mostly projected her own fear and pride onto him. But this smile, though it was bloody and quirked with a flash of pain, was  _him,_ and she felt as if she was meeting him for the first time.

"You're my mission, too," he replied. His steel blue eyes flickered, with recognition and something lighter.

The smile slipped away, into pain and confusion and a hint of his usual blankness, but it seemed that they'd acknowledged the enormity of what they'd done. HYDRA was burning, and they were free to pursue their own missions now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was kinda hard to keep track of which Helicarrier was which in the movie (I'm pretty sure Bucky and Steve were in 01, which collided with the Triskelion. If it wasn't clear, the Wyvern was halfway to getting to 01 before the Helicarriers started going after each other. She ended up under 02 when it fell towards 03, and outstripped them into the hangars below. If anyone cares, haha.
> 
> I believe in the recent comics the Winter Soldier goes to the bank as he is seeking revenge. He kills all but one of the handlers, who says that he has a daughter, and then the Soldier tears apart the Memory Suppression Machine. There wasn't room for me to write that here, but Bucky has just finished doing that when he reunites with the Wyvern.
> 
> Don't relocate your friends' dislocated shoulders without medical help, kids, unless you're both highly trained assassins hiding from the government and HYDRA.
> 
> A note on last chapter: I didn't want Maggie to have her re-awakening purely because of the Winter Soldier, as that leans a little toward the idea of being emotionally and mentally "saved" by another person, which I'm not super comfortable with. He's definitely a big part of her realization, because I've found that I'm stronger when I'm looking after someone else, instead of just having myself to think of, but I wanted the memory of her name to be the catalyst. In the end, it's her own identity that jolts the Wyvern out of her programming just enough.
> 
> Guest: Hope the wait was worth it, and that this chapter lived up to the others!
> 
> Guest: Welcome, new reader! I'm glad you enjoy it, and I hope you're looking forward to next chapter :)
> 
> Kudos, subscribe, and comment, I hope this chapter was worth the wait!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll just quickly explain their ages, since someone asked last chapter and I realized it’s a bit confusing: Maggie’s now twenty seven years old. Bucky is technically ninety six, but biologically is more around Maggie's age (no one really knows because of the whole cryogenic freezing thing). He was almost twenty eight when he fell from the train in 1945, so he’s probably twenty eight/twenty nine now.

 

Even after they spoke, tension still hung between the Wyvern and the man named Bucky. They peeled off their combat jackets and tended to their wounds, shuffling around the apartment. The man named Bucky inspected the apartment and found a loose panel in the ceiling – after levering it open with one of his many knives, he brought down a first aid kit, a phone and a laptop. The S.H.I.E.L.D. director clearly liked to be prepared.

The man named Bucky found some ice in the freezer and held it to his shoulder, while cleaning the cuts on his face with a damp cloth. After triple checking the phone and the laptop for bugs and tracking equipment, the Wyvern took the first aid kit into the bathroom and dressed her various wounds.

She didn’t think they were the worst injuries she’d ever had – the bullet wound was merely a gouge along her ribcage, the puncture in her thigh was already scabbing over, and the various burns and lacerations in her back weren’t serious. Her whole body ached, but she knew it would pass.

She tried to avoid her own face in the bathroom mirror, focusing on her injuries, but when she brought a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic to the gash beside her ear, she could no longer ignore it.

There she was. She’d thought of herself as an asset, a weapon, for so long that her own face was inconsequential. But now she looked into her own dark, bright eyes, and saw _herself._ There was someone in her eyes, looking back at her. Her damp hair was about shoulder-length, dark brown and beginning to dry into waves. She knew she usually had a hair net to keep it contained in her cowl, but it must have been lost in the bowels of the Triskelion. Her face was pale, clearly not often exposed to the sunlight, and pinched with pain. Her features were… symmetrical, though they held no expression. She was blank.

But she looked back up, into her own eyes, and realised she was a person. A woman. Just like anyone else: like a handler, or a target.

The thought frightened the Wyvern. She tossed the cotton ball in the trash, then stepped back out into the apartment.

Her eyes immediately flicked to the man named Bucky. He was sitting at the kitchen table, the open laptop casting blue light onto his battered face. He looked back at her, taking in the butterfly bandage on her temple, the bandage peeking out from the hole in her underarmour shirt, and her feet still in her waterlogged boots. When he looked back to her face, his eyebrows were pinched in a frown.

She strode across the small apartment and sat opposite him at the kitchen table. He wordlessly slid the laptop towards her.

He had opened up what looked like an information dump: she leaned toward the screen and started scrolling. Her mind reeled at the sheer amount of data. What had he found? When her gaze flicked back up to him, he explained.

“I was looking up… S.H.I.E.L.D. I thought if they found him, they’d keep him alive.” His eyes flickered with pain and guilt. “But I didn’t find anything, there’s only this: the Black Widow dumped all of S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA’s data on the Internet.”

The Wyvern’s eyes widened, and she glanced back at the screen. It looked like a great deal of the data was encrypted, and there was so much of it that searching through it would be a gargantuan task, but… “there might be information about us in the data,” she murmured, looking back up at the man named Bucky to gauge his reaction.

His eyes darkened. “How much?”

“I… don’t know. I could look, but it will take time.”

The Wyvern had something else to check first. She went back to the laptop, opening up a new browser window. Her fingers danced across the keyboard. After a minute or so, she spun the laptop around.

“He’s alive,” she said.

The breath rushed out of the man named Bucky’s chest, and he gripped the edge of the table to keep his hand from trembling.

The Wyvern watched his face. She knew what he was seeing – she’d tracked Captain America to a hospital in metropolitan D.C., hacked their electronic admissions notes and found that he was expected to survive his injuries, much to the doctors’ astonishment. The man named Bucky seemed to both relax and tense up as he read the information, as pain, relief and guilt warred in his eyes. She wanted to ask about the man, but she could see that the man named Bucky didn’t want to talk about it. She’d spent a lifetime not asking questions, and it was easy to do now.

She pulled her wings toward her. The sharp Adamantium barbs were retracted into the skeleton, but the sturdy metal still scratched the wooden tabletop. Wincing, she opened the left wing. It couldn’t extend fully in the small kitchen, but she exposed it in sections, examining it in the afternoon light that peeked through the closed kitchen blinds. The carbon fibre had a few gashes and burn marks from the Helicarrier’s barrage, but it was still flyable.

The man named Bucky was still looking at the laptop, a complicated range of expressions flitting across his face. He could look as long as he liked – she’d hidden her tracks.

The Wyvern continued to examine her wings as the light through the kitchen blinds faded away. She had no tools to speak of, but she could run diagnostic tests on the wings and inspect them for damage.

After fifteen minutes of staring at the laptop the man named Bucky stood and began pacing the apartment. He was running checks of his own and peering out the windows, but the Wyvern understood his desire for movement. They’d gone through such a monumental change in the space of a few hours, and her fragmented, turbulent mind was bouncing from thought to thought, making her temples throb.

She threw herself into inspecting her wings, and the use of her hands helped to ease the storm somewhat. She found a tracker and a pair of kill switches, and destroyed them all. She wasn’t too worried about the tracker – the man named Bucky had burned down the computers it was likely broadcasting to.

She asked to look at the man named Bucky’s arm, and when he saw the smashed tracker he was quick to agree.

The Wyvern didn’t know how she knew to open up the arm. She must have done it before. She found a tracker and a kill switch in the metal limb, and destroyed them as well. She closed up his arm again, and turned back to her wings.

She slipped into a reverie, only occasionally throwing glances at the man named Bucky as he moved around the quiet apartment.

As she worked, the Wyvern couldn’t stop her mind from working as well. The Soldier, as it turned out, had a name. _Bucky._ And she remembered hers, or… remembered being told she had a name. _Margaret._ She mouthed it as she ran an eye over the wiring in the base of her wings. It tasted alien in her mouth, but she couldn’t deny the pull she felt toward the name. She was sure she belonged to it, but she didn’t know if she wanted to remember who she was. If she used to be someone. She couldn’t remember a family.

At that thought, a sharp pain bloomed behind the Wyvern’s eyes, and she winced. It seemed her mind was happy to throw out context-less images and voices at will, but the moment she _tried_ to remember, it resisted. She shook her head, and wiped a clump of mud out of a wing joint with a handtowel. Her mind was a snowstorm, and it had already given her so much bewilderment and pain today already. She didn’t want to search for more.

But the Wyvern had been five days out of the chair, and her realisation on the Helicarrier was shaking loose all sorts of uncomfortable truths.

 

* * *

 

 

When the man named Bucky heard a metal _clank_ from the kitchen, he drew his last remaining gun and darted into the room inside of three seconds.

The Wyvern was still seated at the kitchen table, but the wing she’d been working on was sprawled on the linoleum floor. Her eyes were wide, and her breath came fast. The man named Bucky remembered his hand on her back in a dark garden – yet another memory settling into place in his chaotic mind. The context details were slow to come, and even then it was hazy. He didn’t try to push the recall.

He stepped forward and froze when her dark eyes snapped up to his face. There were tears in her eyes, and one spilled down her cheek as he watched.

He saw her tears, saw her clenched fists, saw the shock and recognition in her eyes.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

Her eyes were fixed on his face. “You,” she whispered, chest heaving. “Killing my parents.”

The man named Bucky sagged, and somehow stumbled into the other seat. _Of course_ he’d done that. He was a monster with a mind of jumbled memories. He knew he’d been a man, once: the man that the target – _Steve_ – had recognised. There was a part of that man inside him, he thought, despite the years and the wiping and the freezing. That man knew enough to be horrified at the monster sitting in the kitchen chair across from the Wyvern.

“Do you remember?” she whispered, fists still clenched on the wooden table.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, battering against the whirlwind of blood and death. “No,” he eventually gritted out, meeting her eyes. She deserved that much. “Or… maybe. I remember… I remember killing a lot of people.”

More tears spilled down her cheeks, but she didn’t look away. “So do I.”

The man named Bucky watched her across the table for a few more moments. They hadn’t turned on the lights, but the streetlight outside the closed kitchen blinds was bright enough for him to see the tears gleaming on her cheeks, and the memories flickering behind her eyes.

“Tell me.”

“A car crash.” She inhaled. “You beat my father’s head in. You strangled my mother. You… you grabbed me, here–” she gripped her right bicep with white knuckles. “You put a dead girl in my place. You took me away.”

The man named Bucky closed his eyes for another moment, and let out a shaky breath. “You were a child.”

Their eyes met, dark brown and blue-grey.

“I was.”

 

* * *

 

 

The man named Bucky slept first that night, on his back on the thin bed after doing a last check of the perimeter. They hadn’t discussed the arrangement, hadn’t spoken since their conversation at the kitchen table, but they’d both known it was going to happen.

The Wyvern sat at the kitchen table, listening to his slow breathing, and _knew_ the moment he’d fallen asleep. She got to her feet and stepped into the bedroom doorway. The blinds were closed in here too, but her enhanced eyesight picked out the man named Bucky.

He was a hard line on the bed, still wearing his combat boots and trousers. His metal arm gleamed in the darkness.

She remembered the blazing car, remembered a man with white hair and an open wound for a face, remembered a woman in front of her making choking sounds. She remembered the dead girl, with blood on her face and cold, dead eyes. She remembered the Soldier’s feet crunching in the gravel. She couldn’t remember what she’d been doing before that night, and what happened after was fuzzy. It hurt to try to remember.

The man named Bucky frowned in his sleep, a deep crease forming between his brows. He fidgeted, flicking his head and clenching his fists. She wondered what he dreamed about. She wondered what demons would come for her, in her sleep. Her clearest memories so far were soaked in blood.

The Wyvern _remembered_ the Soldier. She remembered him at the burning car, and in other places: the snow, a metal cage, the desert. In most of the memories he was blank faced, like her, but there were flickers and secrets haunting other memories.

_You are my mission._

She remembered telling him that when he was a demon come to take her away. But what did it mean now?

Hours later, the Wyvern put her hand on the man named Bucky’s shoulder. His eyes opened, but he didn’t move. He looked up at her in the darkness.

“I’ve got lots of memories of you,” she told him, and she could tell from the flicker in his grey-blue eyes that he had the same. “They’re all jumbled. I remember hating you. I remember trying to kill you.”

“I remember that.” His voice was hoarse from sleep, and from the memories.

“I don’t want to anymore.” She showed him the honesty in her eyes and let go of his shoulder. She stepped back.

The man named Bucky sat up, hands by his sides. He took in a long, slow breath. “I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to try again,” he murmured.

There was a long pause. Neither of them moved; the Wyvern standing by the door, the man named Bucky sitting in the bed. Eventually, she broke the silence:

“It’s your turn for watch.”

He climbed out of the bed and passed her in the doorway, leaving the scent of gunpowder and blood in his wake. The Wyvern took his spot in the bed, her eyes widening at the warmth he’d left behind. She realised she’d expected him to be as cold as his metal arm.

The Wyvern slept, dreaming of the people she had killed. She dreamed of the scorching lightning behind her eyes from the chair, and of the Soldier stalking her in the darkness.

The man named Bucky sat in the dark at the kitchen table and listened to the small, discomfited noises she made in her sleep. He remembered the small, sobbing girl in the firelight, and he remembered seeing fury in her dark eyes, over and over.

But the fury was a memory – there’d been no trace of it when she remembered her parents today, or when she’d woken him.

_I don’t want to anymore._

The man named Bucky sat in the dark with his metal arm and his fragmented mind, and tried to understand the woman in the next room.

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern woke at dawn with a jolt, the last image from her dream following her into her waking mind: her heel spurs crunching through a man’s skull and into the soft meat of his brain. The man had crumpled under her, and she’d stepped out of the mess of his head. She hadn’t cared.

The Wyvern stumbled out of bed, her aching body protesting the movement, dashed into the bathroom and threw up into the toilet. When she was done, she turned on the faucet and tried to wash the taste of vomit from her mouth.

The man named Bucky was in the doorway when she turned around, and her hackles instinctively rose at having her exit blocked. Sensing her discomfort, he stepped aside. They looked at each other for a few moments.

Neither of them knew what to say. The night was over, and they were still here. Free of their handlers, free of orders, free of purpose. The Wyvern stepped out of the bathroom, eyeing the dark-haired man to her right, and walked into the kitchen.

The man named Bucky’s stomach growled, and she flinched at the sound. When she turned to look at him, he looked almost… sheepish.

He looked a little better this morning, now he was completely dry and had more colour in his face. His bruises were already tinged with yellow at the edges, beginning to heal.

“I’m going to get food,” the Wyvern decided. She looked down at her grey, ripped underarmour shirt, and her still slightly-damp trousers and boots. “And clothes.”

When she looked up, she saw alarm in the man named Bucky’s eyes.

“I won’t be seen,” she told him. “And if I am, I’m less likely to be recognised than you.”

His eyes flickered to his exposed metal arm and he clenched his jaw, but he didn’t protest. The Wyvern listened at the front door, then unlocked it and slipped into the corridor beyond.

The Housing Authority was a red brick building with hundreds of small apartments filled with colourful people. The Wyvern had stolen supplies on missions before, but usually she had the luxury of fleeing from a location after a theft, rather than walking back down the hall. She eventually climbed to the roof, then scaled the side of the building. She stealthed into a few apartments that way, treading silently through peoples’ homes as they slept. When she climbed back to the roof and then down to the safehouse, she had three plastic bags full of food, and another stuffed with clothes. She’d had to guess the man named Bucky’s sizes, but she had a keen eye for detail.

She was sure that the residents of the Housing Authority would notice that some of their belongings and groceries were missing, but there was no way the thefts would be traced back to the darkened room on the corner of the building. She’d taken nothing worth calling authorities over, either. She hoped.

When the Wyvern let herself back into the apartment, she half expected the man named Bucky to have vanished. But he was sitting at the kitchen table, looking down at the open laptop. From the surprise that flickered across his face as she entered, the Wyvern guessed that he had been expecting her to take off as well. She found herself – inexplicably – offering him another smile. It was small and tight, but they both felt the tension in the room dissipate.

Her eyes flickered to the open laptop as she placed the plastic bags on the kitchen table. Her wings were propped against the fridge.

“Captain America?” she wasn’t used to hearing her voice. She never spoke unless reporting to a handler or faking it for an undercover mission. Asking a question because she was _curious_ was completely alien. She wondered what she sounded like.

The man named Bucky grimaced. “Alive.” He shut the laptop. “He’s strong.”

“I remember.” She placed perishables in the fridge. She hadn’t really known what sorts of food to steal, as she was usually fed on nutrition bars perfectly designed for her enhanced body. She’d gone for similar types of bars: protein and muesli. She’d also grabbed canned foods, biscuits and bread. She had no idea how much of each a person might need to live.

“You fought him?”

She looked back at the man named Bucky. He was watching her with a furrowed brow.

She sighed. “Yes. We both did, two days ago. He called you Bucky then, and they put you in the chair.” She could see some sort of recognition filter into his eyes. She reached around the fridge and lifted her left wing, opening it slightly. She showed him the dent in the metal skeleton.

“He pulled me out of the sky, and his shield did that.” She could see that he wasn’t suitably impressed. “This metal is Adamantium. It’s meant to be indestructible.” The man named Bucky’s eyes widened.

As she turned to put the wing back, she wondered why she’d felt it was so important to convince the man named Bucky of Captain America’s strength. She followed the thought, and when she had it, she turned around. “He’s strong. He’s going to get better.”

She’d wanted to _comfort_ him. That was not an instinct she was familiar with.

It seemed to work, though – the man named Bucky relaxed a little in his seat. The Wyvern pulled clothes out of the last plastic bag on the table, splitting them into two piles. He watched her work.

“What do I call you?” she eventually asked, not looking up at him. She sensed him go still.

“You… I…” he struggled with the words for a few moments. “You can call me Bucky.”

At that, she let herself look at him. He was frowning, but nodding, as if he’d come to a decision.

“Bucky,” she murmured, and his grey-blue eyes flickered to hers.

“What do you want me to call you?”

She eyed him. “Do you remember if I had a name?”

His brows pulled together and he looked down at the table. She could see his thoughts churning, and he winced – she supposed he got the pain behind his eyes as well, then.

“Call me Wyvern,” she told him.

He looked up. “Wyvern.”

She remembered him saying it yesterday, his voice cold on the comms. This wasn’t like that – he said it like a _name_ , now, and not a designation. He said it like he was meeting her for the first time. Her hands stilled in sorting the clothes.

“We can’t stay here for long,” she said.

“No,” he agreed, reaching for his pile of clothes. “They’ll be looking for us – HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D., the government, whoever’s left. I left an agent alive in the bank, he’ll probably talk.”

The Wyvern stared at him. “ _Why_?”

He seemed to crumple a little under her incredulity, but he met her eyes. “I… I went there because… I didn’t have anywhere to go, and they were responsible. I killed the others, tore the chair apart, but he begged me. Said he had a daughter. I realised this was the first time I had the option to _not_ to kill someone. I took it.” His grey-blue eyes were steady on hers, and he lifted his chin.

She sighed. She could hardly judge him for that when she’d made the same choice with the S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjets. And the idea of _choice_ both thrilled her and sent an electrifying jolt of fear into her gut.

“That was _his_ mission,” she said, gesturing at the laptop. Bucky’s eyes flashed. “To stop people from being killed. We could go to him. He’s got friends.”

Bucky was already shaking his head. “No.”

She eyed him for a few moments, taking in his tense shoulders and the firm glint in his eyes. He seemed to take her silence as disagreement, because he continued:

“I tried to kill him. I don’t even… I don’t even really remember him. He’s in hospital. You _know_ about the shit in my head, I don’t want to…” he trailed off, his hands clenching and his eyes darting back and forth.

“Alright,” she replied, and watched his agitation settle. “We should be safe here for a few more days. We can wait for our wounds to heal, and I can build us some covers. But then we should get out of the city. Out of the country.”

He nodded and stood, holding his jumble of clothes against his chest. “A few more days,” he agreed, and sidestepped around the table, heading for the bathroom. Halfway there, he hesitated. He looked over his shoulder at her.

“We?” His face was carefully blank, but she had long ago learned to read past that.

She levelled her gaze. “That’s the mission.”

He smiled again, a quirk of the corner of his mouth that startled her even expression away from her face, and then turned back to the bathroom.

 

Bucky came out of the bathroom in jeans, a black undershirt and a green and blue plaid shirt. The Wyvern had gone to the bedroom to change into her own pair of jeans with a black t-shirt and red knit sweater.

They took a moment to stare at each other. The Wyvern knew she’d never seen the Solider – Bucky – in anything so casual. They’d never gone on undercover missions together that she could remember, choosing stealth and speed over infiltration. He didn’t look quite as bulky and intimidating now he was out of his black Kevlar combat suit, though she knew he was a dangerous opponent no matter what he wore. They both wore their combat boots, as she hadn’t been able to find appropriate shoes in their sizes. Her eyes flicked over Bucky once more – he seemed a little more comfortable in these clothes, though the Wyvern felt stiff and exposed.

She shifted her weight. “There are gloves in the bag on the kitchen table. And we’ve both got jackets.”

“Thank you.”

Once again, he’d startled her. Her eyes widened. She couldn’t remember being thanked before, for anything, let alone for providing an ally with clothes. Bucky seemed to realise the cause for her surprise, because his eyes softened.

“Thank… you,” the Wyvern replied, frowning as she formulated the words. She was sure she meant them, but she couldn’t remember ever saying them before.

Bucky’s lips quirked. “Let’s eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you that might think that the Wyvern forgave Bucky for her parents too quickly: in my mind the Memory Suppression Chair wipes away memory and identity, but you can’t just stop a person from feeling, even if they might not know why they’re feeling. Hence why the Wyvern hates/fears the Soldier every time she sees him. So she has been emotionally dealing with her parents’ murders for over twenty years. Of course she still has quite a bit of processing to do now that she has more freedom of mind, but the revenge attempts from before weren’t random, isolated incidents: they were a progression. Also, she hasn’t actually “forgiven” him. She’s just said she doesn’t want to kill him any more.
> 
> And I know this chapter was just our two favorite amnesiac assassins, but next chapter we’ll be checking in with some ~other~ characters ;)


	16. Chapter 16

The Wyvern and Bucky spent two more nights in the safe house, trying to keep their heads above water in the flood of memories and confusion.

They were constantly on alert, but didn't actually find much to  _do_ during the day. They couldn't leave the safehouse, to avoid detection, so they watched the street below the window through the blinds, ate, tended to their wounds, and built covers and exit strategies using the laptop. They agreed on contingency plans and rendezvous points, if anything should happen to the safehouse or while they were fleeing the city. If the apartment was raided they had multiple plans for escape, splitting up, and meeting back up again. Soon that conversation turned to another kind of contingency.

"If they get me," Bucky began, a muscle in his stubbled jaw jumping, "if they make me obey… I want you to kill me."

They were sitting at the kitchen table again. The Wyvern had been working on the laptop, but at Bucky's request she closed it and levelled him with a hard look.

"No."

He frowned. "No?"

"No. Not unless I have to. Because I know you can be brought back." Her tone was matter of fact. "If they get me, I want you to take me out of action – knock me out, shoot me in the knees, I don't care. Given time, I'll come back. But… if I'm about to hurt someone…" she pressed her hands into her knees, thinking. "Do what you have to."

Bucky was silent as he thought about that. He didn't want to be a danger any more, but he couldn't deny the Wyvern's point. He couldn't see himself making the choice to kill her, if there was a chance to save her. He just hadn't thought she'd be so against the idea of him dying.

"Maybe it would be better," he murmured, looking down at the table. "If I… if I wasn't here."

"Why? You're not planning to keep killing, are you?" When he looked up, the Wyvern's eyes were blazing.

He sat upright. "No."

She nodded, as if that settled the matter. But then something occurred to her, and her face fell. "Do you think it would be better if  _I_ wasn't here?"

Bucky's brows lowered. " _No_." He thought about the way she'd looked at him outside the bank: as if the sight of him, alive, was a miracle. The third thing she'd said to him after getting her freedom was to offer to check that Steve was alive. Her tentative smile, lifting a face so unused to the action.  _I don't want to anymore._  "No," he repeated. "It wouldn't."

She relaxed slightly in her chair, still eyeing him. "Then… the same goes for you."

With that agreed upon, the Wyvern continued building digital covers for them. She identified some HYDRA funds that they might be able to siphon, but they agreed not to do it yet, in case the theft alerted someone. They also kept an eye on the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump, and the news. Their laptop didn't have the processing power to go trawling through all the data, so they had to watch the headlines. No one in the media had even mentioned the Winter Soldier or the Wyvern yet. The intelligence community might be a different story, but that was hard to monitor from their safe house.

But there was one piece of intelligence that was very obvious. At noon on the second day Bucky looked up from the computer, his eyes darting back and forth.

"What do you remember?" asked the Wyvern.

He shook his head. "The Director is dead." He turned the laptop around to show her the headline:  _WORLD SECURITY COUNCIL SECRETARY ALEXANDER PIERCE KILLED AT TRISKELION: REVEALED TO BE HYDRA LEADER._ The headline was accompanied by a picture of the Director in a handsome grey suit.

The Wyvern's face closed off.

"Most of the World Security Council is dead too," Bucky continued. "And the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. The article doesn't say if they were HYDRA."

The Wyvern stiffened. "The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't." At Bucky's questioning glance, she offered a grimace. "We killed him four days ago. This is his old safehouse."

Bucky closed his eyes, slumping in in his seat. "I don't remember. Not… not yet. Tell me?"

The Wyvern didn't really want to – it reminded her of giving mission reports to her handlers. But he needed it. "We were with a team going after him in his vehicle in the city. He got away. We tracked him to… to Captain America's house." Bucky's eyes snapped open. "I identified the target, and you shot him."

"I remember," Bucky said hoarsely. "Ca- Steve, he chased me. You got me off the roof."

The Wyvern waited, but he didn't speak again. They sat together at the dead man's kitchen table, contemplating what they'd done. The Director's face haunted the Wyvern's thoughts.

 

* * *

 

On the second night, the Wyvern took the first shift to sleep. She dreamed of her victims, recalling more and more faces. The Director hovered above her, and his voice was laced with lightning. But then her dream darkened, the details growing vivid: there was blue liquid, knives slicing her open, molten metal bubbling over her bones.

The Wyvern woke with a shuddering gasp, well before Bucky intended to wake her. He was in the room in an instant, but the flash of his metal arm sent a thrill of fear into her gut. She leapt at him, driving her knee into his sternum and whipping him across the face with an elbow. Bucky moved with the blows, rolling to the floor and away from her, and jumped up to fend off more attacks.

The Wyvern was moving again, but away from him. She leaped over his legs and ran into the bathroom, gasping through tears. She fell to her knees before the toilet and threw up again, her arms shaking and her hair getting in her way.

The Wyvern heaved and heaved, bringing up the protein bars and biscuits from earlier, until she was left with nothing but bile. The memory of her own screams filled her ears, and her skin was crawling.

She sobbed into the toilet bowl, a crumpled mess on the bathroom floor.

"Wyvern," came a low voice, and she summoned just enough strength to look over her shoulder. It was Bucky, crouched just inside the doorway of the bathroom. He was pressed against the wall, to give her space in the small room, and as she watched he placed a mug of water on the tile between them. There was a red welt rising on his face, but there was nothing but concern in his eyes.

His small, mundane act of providing water shocked the Wyvern back into herself. She leaned back from the toilet bowl, slumping against the sink.

"I'm sorry," she said in a hoarse voice, wiping her mouth.

He shook his head and pushed the mug toward her. She took it. The cold water was a shock to her system as she swilled it around her mouth and spat it into the toilet bowl. It didn't wash away the screaming or the echoes of pain, but it cleared her mind a little.

After a minute of silence, she spoke again. "Do you remember when they gave you that arm?"

He was quiet for a while, still crouched on the cold tile. "Not really. I think I… I think I hit my head, so it's all blurry. I remember some of the pain, but then I woke up and I had the arm. I remember getting experimented on, but I think that's from… before." He pieced together why she'd asked. "Do you remember getting your wings?"

She let out a tired half-laugh, more of a sigh. "It's not just the wings. They put this… blue liquid in me, which made me stronger. Then they cut me open and put metal in my body. Feel." She swivelled on the tile, gesturing to her back. She made sure to keep him in the corner of her eye.

Bucky approached slowly, his blue eyes unreadable in the darkness. He put his flesh index finger on the nub at the top of her spine, and the Wyvern swallowed back memories of latex gloves on her skin. Frowning, Bucky replaced that finger with a metal one, and tapped. A metallic  _clink_ echoed in the bathroom.

"It's on my spine, ribs, hips, and legs." She turned back around, pulled off her left boot, and extended her heel spur. It  _snicked_ out through her sock, a glinting metal blade. Bucky, now sitting cross-legged in front of her, looked stunned. He'd seen her in action, plenty of times, but seeing her now, slumped on the bathroom floor, seemed to bring home what had been done to her.

She gritted her teeth. "Then they carved holes into my back and made me a machine." She twisted again, lifting the back of her shirt to show him her moorings. "I don't remember…" she frowned. "It must have taken years to do it all. But I remember… I was awake."

Bucky made a sound at that, a sharp exhale through his nose. She turned and saw that his face was pale, twisted in horror and empathy. He didn't avoid her eyes.

She continued: "I was awake for all of it. They told me not to scream."

Bucky looked at the Wyvern, a shivering woman with vomit in her hair and metal on her bones.

"That happened because of me," he murmured. The Wyvern took another sip of her water, watching him over the rim of the mug. "I remember… you were a kid, surrounded by HYDRA agents. I realised that they were 'gonna keep you alive, and I had a moment – just a moment, where I thought that was horrific. But then I left anyway." He bowed his head.  
The Wyvern considered this. She knew what she'd have done, after years of HYDRA programming and wiping. After a long moment, she sighed.

"It didn't happen because of you." Her voice was small, but it made Bucky's head jerk up. "It happened because of  _them_ , and what they wanted." She suddenly recalled the Project Leader's calm, calculating face, and squeezed her eyes shut. "You were just  _there._ You didn't want it. You didn't want anything."

"You don't have to do that." When she opened her eyes, she saw that his were fixed on her, glimmering with pain. "You don't have to excuse what I did. I still did it."

"So did I," she said with a sad smile. "I know what was in your mind when you came for me, because it's exactly what was in my mind on  _hundreds_ of missions. I have done… terrible things. So many horrible things, and I can't even remember them. But if you asked me to do those things again, without the chair and the words?" Tears started slipping down her face again. She noticed that Bucky had tears in his eyes as well. "I wouldn't do it.  _I wouldn't._ " Her hands were shaking, so she put down the mug of water. "I don't know what that means. I don't think it excuses what I've done. But I hope it means that there's a  _person_ in me, not just a weapon."

"There is," Bucky said, his voice firm. "You  _are_  a person."

"And so are you," she continued, her eyes hard now. She had no experience with this, trying to articulate her emotional status. She decided to just say what felt like the truth. "We're people, and that means that what we were before, it was different. It was still us, but different. We're different now, we're… changing. I don't want to kill you, and I don't… the things that happened to me, I don't  _blame_ you."

They sat in silence together, in the dark bathroom. After a while, the Wyvern spoke again.

"What's it like, to be a person? I was a child, and then a weapon. I'm… I don't have any orders, and I'm terrified. How do I be a person?"

Bucky's eyes were soft. "I barely remember. I think this – crying and vomiting and feeling shitty _…_ it's a step in the right direction."

She smiled, startling herself. "It feels terrible."

He smiled back, got to his feet, and offered her his flesh hand. There was a bruise swelling on his cheekbone. "Making jokes is a start as well. Congratulations on being a person."

She took his flesh hand and braced her legs as he pulled her to her feet. She didn't let go of his hand straight away – it was a warm anchor, in the cold tile bathroom.

"Maybe…" she frowned. "Maybe that can be the mission, as well. Being people."

He lowered his head. "Alright. You're the mission."

She let go of his hand. "So are you."

Blue-grey eyes fixed on brown ones for a few seconds more. Then:

"I'm going to wash up," the Wyvern said. "I'll be out in a minute, then it's your turn to sleep."

 

* * *

 

The third day was much the same as the first – sidling around each other in the tiny apartment, peering out the window, monitoring news coverage of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fall. The Black Widow's government hearing made international news, though she said nothing about HYDRA's assets.

They had chilli beans for lunch, and the Wyvern nearly fell out of her seat at the tingling sensation in her mouth. When she reassured Bucky that she hadn't sensed anything suspicious, and explained her reaction, he looked simultaneously sad and amused.

"It's chilli," he said. "It's meant to be spicy. You should try the fresh stuff, it'll be even better."

She poked at her canned beans, frowning. She realised that that was their first real plan for the future beyond their immediate intention to flee. She also realised that if canned food was surprising, the world outside their safehouse was going to be overwhelming. She'd only ever been programmed with operational knowledge. Everything else: food, emotions, being a person; it was irrelevant. Bucky, at least, had been a person before. Though…

"They froze you," she said that afternoon, looking up from the laptop. Bucky was by the window, one eye fixed on a crack in the blinds. At her words, he looked up.

"Yes. They didn't freeze you."

"You're the same, then. You haven't been growing, like I have."

"No."

"How old are you?"

Bucky frowned. "I… don't know. Older than you."

"But I might be older than you, now. Physically."

He shrugged. "Well, since neither of us can remember, it doesn't matter. Actually…" his eyes flickered back out the window, and the Wyvern tensed.

"What?"

"There's a… it's a…" he sighed and nodded at the window. "Come see."

Cautiously, the Wyvern got up from the table and padded toward Bucky. She knelt beside him and peered out the blinds. Cars and people travelled up and down the street below, but the Wyvern saw what had caught Bucky's eye: a metro bus at the traffic light. The entire side of the bus was taken up with an advertisement: red, white and blue stripes, and a dark blue silhouette of a man with bold letters running across it:  _CAPTAIN AMERICA – THE LIVING LEGEND AND SYMBOL OF COURAGE_. Smaller print below the silhouette read:  _Now showing at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum._

The Wyvern cocked an eyebrow. "You want to go?" Bucky had so far been prickly at any mention of Captain America.

"Yeah, I… I think I do. It's a start."

"Alright," the Wyvern said. "The museum, and then we'll leave."

He looked up at her. "You don't have to come."

She shrugged. "Do you not want me to come?"

"No, it's not that. Just… I know you don't know who you are, and that place might have answers for me, so…" he cocked his head, trying to read her.

"That's okay," she replied, her voice soft. "I don't even know if I want to remember. But you want to go to this place, and you're my mission, so I'm going too."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Alright."

 

* * *

 

It was strange for the Wyvern, being able to speak whenever she wanted, instead of under orders. Speaking her thoughts was… difficult, but she found herself warming to it. She started to understand why her handlers loved to gab at each other all day.

Bucky was enjoying it as well, when he wasn't caught up in his own head. He was a little more talkative on the afternoon of the second day, even asking a few questions about her wings. She didn't remember how she knew the answers, but she did, so she explained the Adamantium skeleton, the complex wiring, the artificial neurons. He didn't appear to understand a lot of it once she really got going, but there was genuine interest in his eyes. They both enjoyed the absence of silence in the tiny apartment.

That night, while the Wyvern was on watch, she heard the bed springs creak. She looked up just in time to see Bucky stepping through the doorway, his blank gaze fixed on the front door. He didn't even look at her.

The Wyvern took in his stiff posture, his clenched metal fist, his sightless grey-blue eyes.  _Malfunction_ , she thought.

He was heading for the front door, so the Wyvern let him pass and then soundlessly got to her feet. She instinctively knew he was going to attack her if he noticed her in this state. She waited until he was almost at the door.

She drove her foot into the back of his knee, and dove backwards when his metal fist swung out in retaliation. His punch connected with the drywall with a  _crack_ , but he didn't pull his arm back. The Wyvern got to her feet, ready for action, and scrutinised Bucky's kneeling form. His chest was heaving under his plaid shirt, and his hair was falling into his flickering eyes.

Once she was sure he had snapped out of whatever reverie he was in, she squeezed around the table to get to the kitchen sink. She filled a mug with water, then carried it across the kitchen and placed it on the linoleum by Bucky's knee. She backed off, sitting on the floor a few feet away.

Once he'd got his breathing under control, Bucky pulled his fist out of the wall and sat on the floor, reaching for the mug. His eyes flickered up to hers.

"'M sorry," he whispered.

She shook her head. "Don't be. Where were you going?"

He took a long gulp from the mug. His forehead was sweating now, and he ran a hand over his stubble. "I… I think I was going to HYDRA. Reporting back." He clenched his jaw and avoided her gaze.

"I've thought about it," she admitted. He looked up at her. "I've never been on my own, all I can remember is HYDRA and the mission. But I told you I won't go back. I don't want to. Do you?"

He was already shaking his head, face hard.

"That's it, then." She stood up, pushing her sweater sleeves to her elbows. "You don't want to go back, so I won't let you. You're my mission."

He smiled at that, though he was still shaking. "Thanks. You're my mission too."

The Wyvern picked up her wings and set them on the kitchen table. She'd tended to them as best as she could, with no tools, and cleaned the grime of battle from them. "I don't want to sleep," she said, eyeing her wings. "It's almost dawn, we've done everything we can here. Let's go."

Bucky let out a long breath. "Yeah. Let's do it."

 

* * *

 

January 15th, 2014  
Arlington National Cemetery, Washington D.C.

Sam was surprised, and more than a little flattered, when Steve's scary, one-eyed, not-really-dead ex-boss offered him a job hunting down HYDRA. But Sam could see Steve's mind working – the guy was up to something, and Sam wasn't about to let him run himself into the ground after he'd just gotten out of hospital.

"I'm more of a soldier than a spy," he told Fury.

Fury didn't look surprised. Sam didn't know if the guy ever looked surprised, but hey. "Alright then."

They shook hands over Fury's not-really grave. It was a nice day, sunshine filtering through the green tree canopies and warming the gravestones.

"Anybody asks for me, tell 'em they can find me right here." Fury nodded, then turned and walked away.

"You should be honoured, that's about as close as he gets to saying thank you." Romanoff strode up the line of graves, dressed in black leather with a file pressed against her hip. She hadn't phoned ahead to say she'd be here today, but Sam didn't think that was something that these people really did. Mind you, he'd just shaken a dead man's hand. He  _was_  one of these people now.

He hung back, giving Steve and Romanoff a little privacy. He still didn't know what their deal was, but the snatches of conversation he caught about a nurse named Sharon seemed to point toward their being friends.

Romanoff started to walk away, but then paused. "Be careful, Steve." She nodded at the file she'd given him. "You might not want to pull on that thread."

Sam started heading over, but Romanoff wasn't done. "But if you do… try looking into the Wyvern. Could be that she's another unwitting HYDRA operative, or a handler."

With one last nod, she turned on her heel and was gone. As Sam walked up to Steve's left shoulder, he wondered where she'd show up uninvited next. He peeked at the open file in Steve's hands, and saw the frozen face of the Winter Soldier. He glanced skyward, silently apologising to his mother for hitching his wagon to this crazy bastard dressed as an American icon.

"You're going after him," he said.

Steve didn't look up from the file. "You don't have to come with me."

"I know." He took a breath, steeling himself. "When do we start?"

They meandered through the graves on their way back to the car, while Steve read the file. It had about fifty pages, from what Sam could see, and was written entirely in Russian. He didn't think Steve knew how to read Russian.

Eventually Steve looked up, though he kept the file open to the picture of Barnes's face. "This file goes until the mid 'seventies," he said, and clenched his jaw.

Sam recognised the bitten-off pain in Steve's voice. He kept his mouth shut, knowing that Steve would speak again when he was ready.

He didn't expect what eventually came out: "They haven't found the Wyvern's body in the wreckage."

Sam blinked. "They're still looking, man, there's a lot of damage. I never saw her after she pinned me on the first Helicarrier, she could have been caught in the debris."

Steve looked up from the file, raising an eyebrow at him. "She pinned you?" Steve's eyes flicked over him. "And you're still with us?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "I know, I know, I'm a badass. She's strong as all get out, but she… I don't know, got distracted? I managed to clip her in the ribs and get the hell out of dodge. Got her blood all over my sleeve."

Steve straightened. "Do you still have the shirt?"

"Uh, yeah. When Natasha was watching you in the hospital I went back and got what was left of my gear from where I stashed it – thought maybe it was fixable." He shrugged. "Everything I was wearing that day is in a pile in my garage." He paused. "Why? You think…?"

"Yes," Steve said, his fingers tightening on the file. His eyes were focused. "If we've got her genetic material then…"

"Then what? I don't know if you noticed, but your workplace with all its fancy labs has a Helicarrier sticking out of it."

"I know a guy," Steve replied, and pulled out his phone.

"Hang on, you think you'll just be able to test my shirt and find this chick's last blood donation record? I don't think she's exactly the Samaritan kind. Or the having-records kind."

Steve scrolled through his contacts, still clutching the file in his other hand as they walked. "Tony's good with looking outside of the box," he muttered. "If the Wyvern left a scrap of genetic material anywhere else around the world, he'll find it. This file is dated, but the Wyvern was with Bucky  _three days ago._ She might turn up dead in the wreckage in a week, but if there's no body so far, we don't know that she's dead. And if she isn't dead and she isn't still trying to kill us…"

"Then she's with Barnes," Sam finished, just as they arrived at the car and Steve hit call on one of his contacts. "Wait, Tony? Tony Stark?"

Steve ignored him, climbing into the passenger seat. Sam grumbled under his breath, but got into the driver's seat and started the car.

"Hey Tony, it's Steve." There was abruptly a lot of noise pouring from the receiver, which seemed to make Steve first embarrassed, then flustered, then frustrated. Sam could only assume that Stark was explaining that caller ID was a thing, and then yelling at him about the whole Helicarriers-in-the-Potomac thing. Sam stepped on the gas, heading for his house.

"Yes – yes – Tony, I need your help!" Steve eventually bit out. Then: "No, stay in New York, it's not that kind of help. Besides, I thought you destroyed all your suits."

After another long pause with an endless stream of chatter from the receiver, Steve said "I need you to test some blood for me. I want to know who it belongs to."

Another pause. Then:

"No, I… I know who he is." His voice was small. Sam glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but Steve caught him looking and made his face all stoic and strong. Sam rolled his eyes.

"Oh, you're… you're already on your way? Well I'll give you the sample in person then, I'll meet you… yes, yes, I'll meet you there. Thank you, Tony."

Steve hung up, and sighed. Sam got the sense that a person might need advance training before having a conversation with Tony Stark.

He smirked. "You know a guy, huh? Might have been useful having him around the past few days."

Steve had the grace to look sheepish. "I thought he retired from the combatant side of things. I didn't want to put him in danger."

Sam's smirk fell off his face. Sometimes it was impossible to laugh at Steve when he was being all earnest and noble. "Well, you probably saved his life taking out those Helicarriers. He's going to help you?"

"Yeah," Steve said, going back to the file in his lap. "He's going to help us."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tonyyyyyyyyy.
> 
> Comment, kudos and subscribe, lovely people!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the Marvel Cinematic Universe wiki has Steve beginning his search on the 15th, and Bucky visiting the Smithsonian on the 19th (for context, the Helicarrier battle was on the 12th). Though I've tried to stick to the wiki canon at all times, I had to tweak this a bit so Bucky and the Wyvern go to the Smithsonian on the 15th.
> 
> The wiki is written with people's best guesses, but for this story having them spend seven nights in the safehouse felt a little too long for two people so desperate to get out of dodge. And if Steve's up and ready to go, I feel like they would be, too.

January 15th, 2014  
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C.

After spending the morning gathering supplies for their upcoming journey and disposing of their combat suits, Bucky and the Wyvern broke into the museum. They had to – the Wyvern's wings were folded up in her stolen backpack, along with the laptop and phone from the safehouse. The backpack never would have made it past the museum security, and Bucky's arm certainly wouldn't have. So they disconnected one of the emergency exit doors, slipped through and blended with the crowd of civilians.

The fit in fairly well in their stolen outfits. The museum was busy, with couples and families meandering down the corridors from exhibit to exhibit. The Wyvern wore jeans, boots, and a faded brown bomber jacket over a deep red hoodie. She carried the backpack full of their gear, because they'd agreed that if something happened it was better if she was close to her wings. Bucky was also in jeans and boots, but had stuck with his plaid shirt. He wore a green canvas jacket over the shirt, with woolen gloves to conceal his hands, and a cap pulled low over his face. Together they could be any other couple visiting the museum.

They both instinctively sighted the cameras around the museum and angled their faces away. But the Wyvern couldn't help but look around at the main atrium, filled with air and spacecraft. She couldn't remember ever being in a place like this, with so many interesting things collected for people to just  _enjoy_.

They couldn't dawdle, though. She and Bucky followed the colorful signs to the Captain America exhibit, sticking together in the crowd. Bucky was deliberately casual, with his hands in his pockets to hide his arm, but the Wyvern could sense his discomfort. He didn't make the rookie mistake of fidgeting with his cap or glancing nervously at the museum security, but his shoulders were tense, and his nervousness emanated from him to the Wyvern like an echo.

On either side of the escalator up to the exhibit, two large banners depicted an artistic rendering of Captain America's face. Even with the cowl, the Wyvern recognised the man on the bridge. Bucky clearly did too, because his shoulders tensed even more.

On the escalator up to the exhibit, the Wyvern's mind raced. She eventually settled on tucking her hair behind her ear and turning to face Bucky directly. No one would find anything odd in that. Bucky turned his head to look at her, frowning.

"Whatever's in there," the Wyvern murmured, counting on the loud conversation of the family just below them to cover her words, "the hard part is over."

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Hard part?"

They got to the top of the escalator, and the Wyvern nodded her head at a huge portrait of a saluting Captain America, waiting for them in the exhibit. "You've already faced the man. This is just… research."

Bucky let out a long breath at the sight of the red, white and blue exhibit. People were filing in. "Research," he repeated.

"Yes. And if anything goes wrong, we've got contingency plans."

Bucky didn't exactly relax, but he nodded, took a deep breath, and started moving. The Wyvern stayed by his side.

They didn't linger by the entrance. Beside the title of the exhibit was a video of a waving flag, accompanied by a display that said Captain America had been in the U.S. Military in World War Two, that science had helped him to become the 'pinnacle of human physical potential', and that he was an 'embodiment of freedom.'

The Wyvern wrinkled her nose. She had some operational knowledge about World War Two; weapons and vehicles that originated in the war, and some military strategy, but she didn't know when the conflict started or why.

Bucky said nothing, so they walked into the exhibit. A stoic-sounding voice emanated from speakers in the ceiling, and the words washed over Bucky and the Wyvern as they walked past the enormous mural of the man on the bridge.

"A symbol to the nation. A hero to the world. The story of Captain America is one of honour, bravery, and sacrifice."

Bucky's eyes flicked back and forth. A child in the family behind them was jumping up and down, demanding that his parents properly admire the mural. The Wyvern was already confused.

They followed the corridor around, coming across two blue displays that held first an image of a shorter version of Captain America, and then the taller one that the Wyvern recognised.

"Denied enlistment due to poor health, Steven Rogers was chosen for a program unique in the annals of American warfare. One that would transform him into the world's first super soldier."

The Wyvern looked out of the corner of her eye at Bucky. He was staring at a photo of the smaller version of Rogers: a squinting, skinny-limbed boy with dog tags around his neck.

"Thought I was going crazy," Bucky eventually muttered. "Remembering a tiny kid called Steve. But yeah, this… this makes sense."

The Wyvern was about to reply, but her eyes had caught on a sentence inscribed on the other side of the corridor:  _While on tour in Azzano, Italy, Rogers' heroic actions saved 163 lives – including that of his best friend, Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes._

The Wyvern frowned at the words. The name called to her, but she couldn't put her finger on  _why_. She opened her mouth to mention it to Bucky, but he was already moving again, into the wider room beyond.

This room was filled with war memorabilia: film reels, a motorbike, faded letters behind glass. Bucky was marching straight through it all, not stopping to read a single exhibit. The Wyvern hurried to catch up, until she noticed a name and date in bold font on a far wall:  _Steven Grant Rogers, born July 4 1918._

The Wyvern actually did a double take. Her handlers had sometimes remarked that her mind was like a computer, capable of solving advanced mathematics and engineering problems in seconds. But the sight of that date had her frozen in place for five whole seconds.

The man was almost  _ninety six years old._ The Wyvern looked up and saw Bucky's back moving through the crowd. If Steve Rogers said he knew Bucky…

She shook her head, and paced after Bucky again. They couldn't afford for her to be the one overwhelmed by the exhibit.

She caught up with him just as he entered the next room. This was the largest space yet, a wide room with high ceilings, decorated with more murals and smaller displays arranged around the floor.

"Battle tested, Captain America and his Howling Commandos quickly earned their stripes. Their mission: taking down HYDRA, the Nazi rogue science division."  
The Wyvern flinched at the name but forced herself to look back at Bucky's face. He hadn't reacted at all: he was keeping pace with the crowd, ostensibly a casual museum goer, but his eyes were fixed on the mural on the far wall. She followed his gaze and flinched again.

There he was. The mural showed Captain America in full uniform with six men flanking him, and on Rogers' direct left was  _Bucky_.

The Wyvern froze again, and this time Bucky stopped moving as well. The other visitors streamed around them as they stared up at the patriotic mural.

He looked so  _young._ It was an artist's depiction, but the Wyvern couldn't tear her eyes away from Bucky's short, neat hair, serious brow, and bright eyes. Below his face was a replica uniform: a blue double-breasted coast, brown trousers, and a rifle. She stared at him, and the six men surrounding him on the mural. They were a team.

"Over here," Bucky murmured, his voice low and scratchy-sounding. His arm brushed hers as he moved and she couldn't help but follow, mind racing. That was his team: the Howling Commandos. The museum narrator said that they were  _fighting_ HYDRA. What happened?

The thought fell away when she looked up to see where Bucky was heading – a glass display on the side of the room, half of it taken up by an enlarged picture of Bucky's face, with short hair and serious eyes. The display read:  _A Fallen Comrade._

The Wyvern's hands tightened on the straps of her backpack, and she glanced at the real Bucky. His lips had parted, and his eyes were fixed on the display. Heart pounding, the Wyvern looked back.

_James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes._

Bucky and the Wyvern stood in silence as they read the words on the glass.

"Best friends since childhood," said the stoic narrator, "Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battle field. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country."

The Wyvern reached the bottom of the display:  _Bucky Barnes. 1917-1944._

She wanted to hide her face in her hands, to avoid the serious gaze of the photo-Bucky. She wanted to cry. She wanted to put her fist through the display. She could only imagine how Bucky felt.

She noticed movement out of the corner of her eye and gasped at the sight of a screen showing film reels at the bottom of the display. She'd been so caught up in the photo of Bucky's face, and the apparent date of his death, that she hadn't even noticed.

There was a shot of Bucky, his dark hair combed neatly, poring over a map with Steve Rogers. His face was serious. The film cut to another shot, this time of Rogers and Bucky smiling together in what must have been an interview. The Bucky in this film wasn't so serious: he looked at his friend and laughed, his eyes closing in mirth as he bent over, shaking his head. The sight of what once was, this black-and-white Bucky laughing with his best friend, plunged into the Wyvern's chest like a knife.

This was definitive proof of Bucky's personhood, proof that he'd had a family –  _oldest of four,_ the display read – and a friend who loved him. He was a war hero. He'd given his life fighting against HYDRA. The Wyvern remembered the way Steve Rogers had said Bucky's name, soft and quiet in the middle of a battle. She understood, now.

Bucky was still staring, his eyes bright and his jaw clenched. The Wyvern didn't know what to do. She was good at killing people, not comforting them. She decided to do her best – for the mission.

Slowly, she reached out and put her hand on Bucky's upper arm – the flesh arm. She didn't really know why she did it, just that it felt like a good idea. Bucky inhaled in response to the touch, but didn't look away from his own death date.

"I'll be over here," the Wyvern murmured, trying to convey with just her palm on his canvas jacket how… how sorry she was, how affected she was by his personhood, how much she wished everything wasn't terrible and didn't hurt.

She wondered if people usually felt so inadequate after trying to comfort someone else. She supposed most people didn't usually try to console a man who'd lost his life, memories and identity, and had to read about himself in a museum to get a fraction of it back.

The Wyvern paced away from Bucky, hands gripping her backpack straps. She wandered around the Howling Commandos exhibit, reading about Bucky's comrades and their missions in Europe from 1943 to 1945.

She tried to calm herself down –  _it's not your story_ , she berated herself.  _It shouldn't matter._ But every time she came across an image of Bucky with his best friend and his team, her chest ached. She wondered if part of being a person was always having to  _feel_. And feeling, so far, had only hurt.

She managed to put together the whole story: Steve Rogers' incredible transformation, his liberation of P.O.W.s in Austria, including Bucky and the members of what would soon be the Howling Commandos. She read about Bucky's fall from the train, and Rogers' sacrifice on the  _Valkyrie_ just four days later. She wondered about the kind of man Bucky had been. She wondered if he was still that man, despite HYDRA and the Winter Soldier.

She wondered if she had people who missed her like Steve missed Bucky. The thought made tears sting in her eyes again, so she pushed it away and concentrated on a display dedicated to the team's communication specialist, Jim Morita.

She was concentrating so hard that she was startled when Bucky appeared beside her, his hands still stuffed in his pockets. She didn't flinch, but she knew he'd noticed her surprise.

She met his eyes. "So," she began, and then realised she didn't know how to finish.

He let out a soft half-laugh, though his brow was heavy. "Yeah." He cleared his throat. "I kinda remember. Not everything, but all of this… it helps."

"Good," the Wyvern murmured. "I'm glad we came."

He nodded, and her chest ached again at the pain in his eyes.

"You're a lot older than I expected," she blurted out. That made him laugh again, a little more earnestly this time. Not the way he had in the black-and-white film, with closed eyes and a carefree flash of teeth, but she could see a glint of something that wasn't sadness in his eyes. She smiled, the action still alien to her.

"Ninety six years old," he said, shaking his head. "I think I'm doing pretty well, considering."

"I think I see some grey hairs," the Wyvern teased, and then her eyes widened as she realised what she'd done. She'd never  _teased_ someone before. She scrutinised Bucky's face, concerned, but he only smiled again, despite the aching sadness in his eyes.

"We should go," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They ambled side-by-side through the rest of the exhibit, leaving enough time for Bucky to read each display. As they left, he took a brochure from a stack by the door. They slipped out a different emergency exit and left the museum via the loading bay, still processing what they had learned.

 

* * *

 

Avengers Tower, New York City

Two hundred and thirty miles away, Tony Stark arrived back in his lab after a quick trip to Washington D.C., swinging a bloody shirt in a plastic bag in one hand.

"Hit me, J."

The opening drum beat and guitar riff of  _Walk This Way_  blasted through his top-of-the-line StarkTech speakers.

Tony nodded along, and dropped the plastic bag on one of his gleaming workspaces. "Wait, where's Jolly Green?"

"It appears that Doctor Banner took advantage of your rapid departure from the city, sir, and is currently meditating in his living quarters."

"Huh." Tony threw his paper coffee cup at Dum-E, who had rolled into a corner and seemed to be stuck. "Well, the whole evil Nazi cult thing hit him hard. Pity we won't get a visit from the big guy."

"Indeed," J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice was terse.

"Well, J, it looks like we've been promoted to CSI techs in the good Captain's new world order. Let's get this party started!"

He clapped his hands, and the lab whirred to life.

 

* * *

 

Port Dundalk Marine Terminal, Baltimore

In the darkness between two shipping containers, Bucky lifted a pair of metal wings and slotted them into the moorings on the Wyvern's back. He vaguely remembered doing it before, so he knew how much pressure to use and knew to let go when he heard a metallic  _click_.

The Wyvern rolled her shoulders, taking a second to adjust to the weight and to let the information from the wing sensors run through her. The weight was familiar, making her feel grounded and safe.

She turned around. She kept the wings mostly folded up, but Bucky was still eyeing the Adamantium skeleton and barbs with something like wariness. She could just see his glinting eyes in the darkness.

"What?" she whispered, eyeing him. Had he noticed something suspicious? They'd been so careful, stealing a car that wouldn't be missed for days from a workshop, and taking side-roads from D.C. to Baltimore, but maybe someone had caught on to their trail.

"Do they hurt?"

She lowered her hackles. "The wings?"

"Yeah." His voice was low.

The Wyvern thought about it. She was sure that no one had ever asked her that while she was with HYDRA, so she'd never considered it. She rolled her shoulders again and shuffled the wings. "No," she eventually decided. "It's more of a heightened awareness, more information to process. I can feel them, but it's not painful. Why?"

Bucky glanced away. "Didn't want to make you do this, if it was 'gonna hurt you."  
She smiled. The action was still unfamiliar, but felt like a fitting response to his empathy. "You're not making me do anything. Does your arm hurt you?"

He glanced down at the gleaming metal, as if he'd forgotten it was there. "Not the arm. I get information from it, like you said. But… sometimes my shoulder, where it's attached."

The Wyvern's eyes flickered over his shoulder, even though it was concealed by his canvas jacket. She remembered seeing his bare chest and the pearly, puckered scars where the arm connected with his flesh. She hadn't really thought about it then, too concerned with the Soldier's tormented eyes, but now her mind was awhirl with theories and questions about the connectivity of the metal arm – was it linked internally, to his bone, or did it fit over the stump of his arm like a socket? And more importantly, could what HYDRA did to him be improved upon, to ease his discomfort? She doubted they would have asked him if it hurt, either.

But now wasn't the time to bring it up. "Let's go," she murmured.

Bucky nodded, pulled their backpack onto his own shoulders, picked up the duffle bag full of food and clothes, and then turned around. This part of the dockyard was dark, filled with empty shipping containers, but they could hear men talking and metal clanking further down the dock, where an enormous cargo ship was being loaded. A salty breeze blew in from the river, and the temperature plummeted with each hour of darkness.

The Wyvern took a moment to focus – this was her first time using the wings outside of HYDRA's clutches, and she didn't want to lose herself in the familiar feeling of soaring into the sky on a mission. Once she was ready, and had listened for a few more moments to make sure no one was around, she looped her arms under Bucky's, whispered " _jump_!" and gunned as few engines as possible to get them off the ground.

The freezing night air bit at their exposed skin as they soared up from the shipping containers, and the Wyvern narrowed her eyes so they didn't tear up and obscure her vision. Her goggles were stuffed in the backpack somewhere. Once they'd gained enough height, she cut the engines and flipped them into a downward arc, her wings spread to slow their fall. They'd chosen a remote part of the docks to start from, but the container ship was well lit and had men working on the port side.

"Northwest corner," she heard Bucky say over the buffeting wind. She peered at the area of the ship he'd pointed out – the surface of the stacked containers wasn't completely even, and she could see a gap in one corner. There was a space the size of two shipping containers open at the top of the piles, invisible from deck.

"Brace yourself," she warned Bucky, and angled them into a dive. He pulled his arms in tighter to his chest and mimicked the shape of her body – they moved effortlessly together, and the Wyvern remembered flying him like this before. She blinked away the memories, though, and focused on their descent.

They plunged through the air, and at the last second, when the bulk of the shipping containers concealed them from the dock, she flared her wings so they didn't break their knees when they dropped onto the metal container.

As soon as their boots hit metal, Bucky and the Wyvern disentangled themselves and crouched, listening for shouts or alarms. But two minutes passed, and the only sounds were the ship's crew preparing for departure, and the water sloshing against the side of the pier.

The Wyvern raised her eyebrows at Bucky, and he nodded.  _All clear_. She'd already confirmed that the crew had finished loading containers, so all they had to do now was get comfortable and wait for their ship to leave. It would be a cold, windy few days at the top of the exposed pile of shipping containers, but completely untraceable.

Bucky helped the Wyvern remove her wings again, and put them in the duffle bag so they wouldn't clang against the metal containers. The Wyvern paced around their new, temporary home – a twenty foot by sixteen foot hole amongst the corrugated maroon and blue shipping containers, eight feet deep.

Something about the confined space made her skin tingle with recognition. She turned around slowly, chasing the memory, but she didn't get it until she saw Bucky's metal hand flash in the gloom.

Seeing her wide eyes, Bucky stilled and sat on the corrugated metal. "What do you remember?"

"Do you remember fighting me in a cage?" she asked, keeping her voice low so it wouldn't carry down the stack of containers and alert the crew.

Bucky frowned. This was a routine of theirs, by now. If they had a flash of a memory they would ask the other if they remembered it too. They couldn't always help each other, but it helped to have someone to make the memories real, to confirm that they weren't going crazy.  
Bucky thought about it. "I think it was twice. I… I fought a few people in a cage, I can't remember where…"

"It was cold," the Wyvern murmured, pacing toward Bucky and sitting beside him, with the duffle bag and backpack between them. "Rock, and ice."

"Yeah," he nodded slowly, and ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. "You were young, both times. The first time you… I beat you, I hurt you." Guilt flashed across his face, and he looked sideways at her.

"I remember," she said, unconsciously reaching up to the back of her head. She remembered him slamming her against the metal bars, and how she'd staggered out of the base. "The second time I almost killed you. Twice." She felt her own wave of remorse at that and curled her fingers around her knees. She'd been so  _angry._ She didn't think she felt angry any more, at least not at Bucky. At HYDRA and all the men who'd used her, sure. But it was a distant, smouldering burn, not the hot pit of rage she used to feel whenever she looked at Bucky.

"That's right," Bucky said. "And then… why did the fight end? I remember it ending, but I don't think I knew why. Did you win?"

The Wyvern closed her eyes, shuddering as the memory washed over her: pressing her fingernails into Bucky's straining neck; gunshots and screams; the man in the black suit clutching at the wet stain on his stomach. She let out a shaky breath. "Your handler shot mine. The base… everyone started fighting. You followed me into the snow, and I tried to kill you. But I didn't." She opened her eyes. "That was the end of the Program."

Bucky was looking down at his clenched fists, the memory clearly having a similar effect on him. "The Winter Soldier Program?" he asked.

"That too, but I meant the Wyvern Program. The one that made me. The people that made me… they died in that base." The Wyvern closed her eyes again, tipping her face toward the starry sky.

"There's more out there," Bucky murmured. "People who wiped us, people who tortured us and made us weapons."

The Wyvern looked at him. Bucky was cross-legged on the metal container, glaring into space. "Do you want to go after them?"

He inhaled through his nose. "I should."

"But you don't want to."

He met her eyes. "What does that make me? I spend seventy years killing people and the second I have a chance to use those skills against HYDRA, I've had enough?" His voice was tight, and he searched her face.

The Wyvern really needed to have some training on how to comfort people. Bucky had done fine comforting her. She sighed. "Maybe… maybe that makes you a person."

Bucky exhaled, and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Really? Not a goddamn coward?"

"I'm not an expert on cowards," the Wyvern began, peering down at her pale fingers. "No one ever taught me about things like that. But… you just got your mind back. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to get out of the fight." She frowned at herself. The concept of  _morality_ was a new one for her, and the endless possibilities were exhausting to contemplate. Bucky had stopped pushing his hands into his eyes though, so she might be on to something. "Besides," she continued, "I'm sure there are plenty of people out there eager to take down what's left of HYDRA, now that it's been exposed."

He sighed. "'Spose you're right. Steve's probably going to be first in line." He huffed a laugh and the Wyvern smiled, recalling the two young men laughing at each other in a black and white film reel.

Bucky was remembering new things about his life before HYDRA hourly, it seemed, but she couldn't recall a single thing. She supposed it was because she'd been so young, and they'd wiped her so many times. She'd keep trying.

"He's a… good man?" she asked eventually. Morality – so confusing.

"One of the best, from what I can remember." Bucky's voice was soft.

The Wyvern found herself – inexplicably – ready with another teasing comment. She considered ignoring it, but the last one had made him smile. "Is he also the 'living embodiment of freedom'?"

Bucky laughed again, the same exasperated huff as before. "I remember thinking that stuff was weird," he murmured. "I mean, I got it, but Steve could also be a little shit half the time."

That made the Wyvern laugh, thinking of that pinnacle of patriotism she'd seen on the museum murals, irritating his best friend. Bucky looked up at the sound, eyes wide, and the Wyvern realised that she mustn't have ever laughed before. She touched her fingers to her lips.

She'd spent her whole life that she could remember as a weapon, unfeeling and cold. Ignoring her handlers' orders and hiding with Bucky was terrifying, but she was uncovering more and more potential within herself every day. She could feel, she could comfort another person – albeit poorly –, she could contemplate morality, and she could  _laugh._ She knew that HYDRA had lied to her, used her, but the proof of it was exhilarating.

The container ship's engines hummed into life, and soon they were pulling away from the dock, down the river and out to the sea. Bucky and the Wyvern leaned against the side of their makeshift cabin and contemplated becoming people again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian Stan's hair is perfect and I'm sorry for teasing it.
> 
> I kept writing "Bucky and the Wyvern" and it started sounding more and more like a band name in my head.
> 
> I studied History at uni, so I kind of really love museums – can you tell, from the super long museum scene? Tbh I'm a little miffed that the movie exhibit seems to go straight to the serum, instead of starting with Steve's childhood, but I suppose it's a more military-focused museum (or it's out of order). Why the exhibit isn't in the National Museum of American History instead of the Air and Space Museum, I don't know.
> 
> Also, HELLO I'M A GIANT NERD and I found a mistake in the movie: Bucky's display begins with the sentence "Born in 1916, Barnes grew up the oldest child of four," but Bucky was actually born in 1917, which is what it says at the bottom of the display. C'mon, fake Smithsonian.
> 
> The Tony scene was originally just going to be a sentence long, but I can't help myself. We'll hear more from him next chapter, I know you guys are looking forward to it!


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy belated birthday to Steve Rogers, and I hope all my US readers had a lovely 4th of July!

January 16th, 2014  
Sam Wilson's House, Washington D.C.

Sam and Steve had spent yesterday translating and discussing the Kiev file, and it looked like today was shaping up to be more of the same.

"You know," Sam had said yesterday, "You might've asked the ex-Russian spy to translate this for you before she took off for who knows where."

"She's done so much already," Steve replied, looking from the open file to the Google Translate tab on Sam's home computer. "And she didn't sign up for this."

"Yeah, yeah."

So they'd been struggling with Google Translate for a day now, picking out locations of bases the Winter Soldier might have gone back to. Sam's loungeroom was mess of paperwork, dirty dishes and takeout wrappers – if Sam couldn't get Steve to rest after being shot a bunch of times, he was damn well going to keep him properly fed.

They'd dropped Sam's bloody shirt off at an airstrip outside the city yesterday afternoon. Sam had tried to look tough and not at all like he was super excited to meet Tony Stark while Steve handed the bagged shirt to the man himself. Stark was wearing an expensive-looking suit and vibrant orange sunglasses, and shook Steve and Sam's hands at the foot of the stairs to his private jet. Sam thought his first meeting with Stark went well, even though he'd been called "bird-man" and "Maverick" and "fly boy". He'd had worse, as far as nicknames went.

Stark had been mostly occupied with giving them nicknames, but he'd given it a rest for about a minute when he told Steve that he was going through the information dump, and that HYDRA had been doing some messed up shit. He also asked about the blood, but didn't seem too displeased when Steve wouldn't elaborate on it. Stark said he was going to do the DNA testing himself, but apparently even with all his fancy toys it would take at least half a day.

It was nearing midday now, and Steve and Sam had gotten through a good chunk of the pile. They'd emailed the locations of a few HYDRA and ex-Soviet facilities to Nick Fury, in case they weren't in the information dump. So far they didn't have anything on where Barnes might be, though. Mostly just a better knowledge of all the horrible shit that had been done to him, and that he had been made to do. Sam had forced Steve to take a break for lunch, and they were plowing through sandwiches at Sam's dining table.

Sam happened to glance out the window, contemplating ducking out to get milk or something – anything to take a break from the file and the messed-up people who had written it.

Since he was looking out the window, he got a prime view of Iron Man when he hurtled into Sam's backyard, repulsors roaring and slitted eyes glowing, and put a crater in the lawn.

"Holy shit!" Sam jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair, and stumbled toward the screen door.

"What the…" Steve muttered, also rising.

The red and gold Iron Man suit stepped out of the charred crater in Sam's backyard and marched toward the house.

Sam flung the screen door open. "C'mon, man, a little respect for the garden-" but Stark simply brushed him aside as he stomped into the living room, the suit whirring and whining as he moved. Sam bounced off the metal shoulder of the suit, wincing, and shot an alarmed look at Steve.

Steve was standing by the dining table, sandwich forgotten. "Tony, what-"

Before he could finish his sentence, the suit clicked and unfolded, the metal sliding apart to reveal Stark, in stained jeans and an AC/DC shirt. He looked like he'd come straight from his lab. Sam, about to protest the defacement of his backyard again, shut his mouth. The dude was  _pissed._

Stark produced the plastic bag with the bloody shirt and stormed toward Steve. " _Where did you get this_?" He brandished the bag in Steve's face. His eyes were shot with red, and there was a barely concealed fury in his voice. "No secrets or bullshit, tell me where you got this blood."

Steve opened his mouth, taken aback. "Tony, I…" He didn't seem to know how to finish the sentence, staring at Tony's sparking eyes and clenched jaw. The billionaire was about four inches shorter than the super soldier but he was right up in Steve's face, glaring. The Iron Man suit was standing, unfolded, just inside the screen door.

Tony glared at Steve for a second longer, then whirled around and strode toward Sam, who took a step back from the sheer force of Stark's intensity.

"Come on, Wilson," Stark hissed. His whole bearing was aggressive, and his breath came fast and hard. Sam hadn't thought Stark remembered his name. "This is your shirt, isn't it? Where'd the blood come from?"

Sam backed right up against his own window, completely unprepared for facing a furious Tony Stark.

Seeing Sam cornered by Tony sparked Steve into action. He followed Tony across the living room and got between him and Sam, palm out. "Tony, back off. What did you find?"

" _No_." Stark's eyes were wild, and Sam noticed that his knuckles were white where they gripped the bag. "You came to me, you give me answers  _now. Where did you get the blood_?" There were a few more seconds of silence from Steve, filled with Tony's erratic breathing. "Goddammit Rogers, if I have to beat it out of you-"

"The Wyvern," Steve spat out, his brow heavy in that way that made you want to listen to him. Sam could only watch. "One of HYDRA's combatants on the Helicarriers. She fought Sam, left blood on his shirt."

Tony whirled around. "J.A.R.V.I.S." The dormant suit kicked back into life, reforming into the more recognisable Iron Man, and held out a palm. Blue light glowed from the extended palm, resolving itself into a hologram of the Wyvern – it looked like it was taken from a photograph of the Wyvern in flight during the Helicarrier battle. The lines of her suit and wings were depicted in clean blue lines, and her goggles were tiny red pinpricks.

Sam couldn't even appreciate the awesome-factor of a projected hologram in his own living room, because Stark's whole body was clenched with aggression and something else – something familiar. Sam and Steve sidled around so they could see the hologram and Tony's haggard face. He looked like he'd been working all night.

Sam flinched when a British voice emanated from the suit: "It appears that the Wyvern is a covert HYDRA assassin with flight capability, who fought Captain Rogers and his allies on a metropolitan D.C. causeway on the 11th, and on the Insight Helicarriers on the 12th. I can find no record of the Wyvern prior to those dates. I have begun sifting through the S.H.I.E.L.D. information dump for mention of the Wyvern, but it will take time, sir."

Tony stared at the revolving image of the Wyvern, all hard metal and red eyes. "What, no mug shots?" His voice was tight, and the knowledge didn't seem to have calmed him down. In fact, his breathing was speeding up. Sam could see his chest heaving. Sam took half a step forward, then thought better of it.

"None, sir. There are no other images of the Wyvern that I can find."

Tony started hyperventilating in earnest now, his breathing hard and fast as sweat beaded on his forehead. He took a step away from the hologram, and stumbled.

Steve jumped forward and caught him by the elbow. "Tony, what's wrong?"

"Calm down Steve, it's just a panic attack," Tony laughed breathlessly at his own joke, gripping the arm supporting him.

Iron Man landing in his backyard? Tony Stark yelling at him? Sam had been clueless. But this… this he could handle.

Sam jumped in, taking Stark's sweaty arm and leading him to the couch. "Alright, have you had a panic attack before?" At Stark's shaky nod, he lowered him onto the cushions. "What's helped in the past?"

Stark started taking sharp breaths through his nose, his eyes still wide. Sam sat next to him, keeping one hand on the man's trembling arm. Steve hovered beside the couch, seeming kind of small despite his bulk in the face of his friend's distress.

Sam nodded, watching Stark's breathing even out. "Good, that's good. It'll pass, man, you've just got to keep breathing. Come on, I bet you've got some expensive-ass therapists, what did they tell you to do?"

Tony closed his eyes, and kept controlling his breathing. He was visibly starting to calm down, so Sam pulled his focus up.

"Steve, get him some water."

Steve was gone and back in an instant, pressing a cold glass into Stark's hands. The man took a long drink, the haunted look starting to fade from his face. When he was done, he leaned over on the couch and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

"You work nights as a therapist or something?" He eventually asked, his voice much steadier.

Sam laughed. "Days, actually. Though I haven't been back since I helped blow up an intelligence agency."

"Should've stuck to your day job."

"Probably."

Steve and Sam shared a look over Stark's head: an  _I don't know what the hell is happening but let's keep this guy calm_  look.

Stark finally looked up and scrubbed his palms on his jeans – probably not wiping the sweat off so much as collecting motor oil. He squinted up at Steve, who was still hovering by the couch. "Alright, Steve, settle down. I'm going to tell you what I found."

"I just want to make sure you're alright, Tony." Steve gave him an earnest expression that Sam honestly thought should be patented. It worked, too – Stark's hackles lowered, and he got to his feet.

"J.A.R.V.I.S., the test results?"

The revolving hologram of the Wyvern switched to a whole bunch of graphs and tables. Sam stood up to get a better look, but he couldn't make heads or tails of the results: to him it was a colourful zig-zagging line with numbers surrounding it.

"This is the DNA markup for the blood sample from your shirt, closet therapist," Tony explained, gesturing at the hologram. Steve and Sam were blank faced.

"I've got no idea what I'm looking at, Tony," Steve eventually sighed.

Tony clicked his fingers and the suit's other palm rose, projecting another set of holographic graphs. "These… are  _my_ DNA results." The palms of the suit came side-by-side, so Steve and Sam could compare the two graphs.

Sam cleared his throat. "They're… not the same."

"Gold star, Captain Obvious," Stark said. His tone was light, but Sam could hear the tight edge of tension under his voice. "No, but they're a  _lot_ more similar than I expected. The sample from your shirt shares a fifty per cent similarity to my own DNA." He pointed at a particularly jagged section of the colourful graph in one projection, and drew a line to a similar section in the other.

There was a silent pause. Sam had done high school science, he knew enough to have some idea of what that meant. Steve had caught up on modern science as well. Still, neither of them fully understood.

"What are you saying, Tony?" Steve asked.

"What  _am_ I saying," Stark breathed, shaking his head at the combined graphs. He looked exhausted. "I'm saying… I'm saying that I think this blood belongs to my sister."

There was a very long silence after that. Stark didn't look away from the graphs. Steve didn't look away from Tony, and Sam couldn't stop glancing between the three: graphs, Stark, Steve.

Sam broke the silence. "But… she died, right? Years ago. I was a kid when it happened."

Stark stayed silent, seemingly lost in thought as he contemplated the hologram.

"1991," Steve added, his voice soft. "I heard about it when I came out of the ice. Tony?"

Stark ran a hand through his hair. "That's what I thought." His voice was hoarse. "But I ran the sample against my parents: fifty per cent match to each of them. I found an old blood test of M- of Maggie's." He gestured at the suit, and a new hologram appeared from the left hand. This one was identical to the one on the right, as far as Sam could see. "It's a match."

Stark turned to face Steve and Sam, and his eyes were painfully bright. "I  _quadruple_ checked these results, and when they kept coming back the same, I came straight here. I need you to  _explain._ "

Sam glanced at Steve. They both knew that Tony already had the explanation, that he just needed it spelled out.

"If these test results are right, Tony…" Steve straightened his shoulders. "Then your sister is alive."

The breath gusted out of Stark's chest, and he brought his hand up to his eyes, as if he could hide from what he'd found. Sam reached a hand out, but he didn't know what to do. He still didn't  _understand_ , how could-

"I've gotta… I've gotta go," Stark mumbled, and stepped toward his suit. A second later he was enfolded in the metal shell, the eyes glowing, and he was walking back out the door.

"Tony, wait-" Steve called, but there was a whine of repulsors, and Stark was gone.

Sam put his hands on his hips and looked at the floor, trying to process what had just happened.

"Sam, you okay?" Steve's voice was low. Sam glanced up, and saw that Steve was still looking out at the crater in the lawn.

"Me? Yeah, man, I'm fine, he just…" he trailed off.

"I know." Steve turned, his jaw set and his eyes troubled. "C'mon. We're going to New York."

 

* * *

 

Container Ship, The Gulf of Mexico

Bucky and the Wyvern sat side by side against the wall of a shipping container, sharing body heat in the freezing afternoon air. It had been a long, cold night and morning, and even their enhanced metabolisms and extra clothes hadn't been enough to keep the chill away.

Neither of the former assets had yet had a sleep uninterrupted by nightmares, but something about the cold metal under their backs last night seemed to make it worse. Bucky had had to clamp a hand over the Wyvern's mouth to stop her screaming in her sleep and alerting the crew to their position. When Bucky had tried to sleep, the Wyvern ended up smothering his screams as well. She'd also absorbed a panicked blow from his metal arm, to stop the limb slamming straight through the top of the container below them. After that, Bucky had pushed himself into the corner and not said a word for hours, his face gaunt and creased with remorse.

So neither of them had gotten much sleep. They spent their time eating and occasionally whispering to each other. Bucky often closed his eyes and seemed to slip into his memories, occasionally flinching or frowning at what he found. Without anything to distract her, the Wyvern got caught up in her own head.

She couldn't imagine having done this by herself. Even if she'd somehow broken through HYDRA's programming on her own, running and hiding like this would have been incredibly lonely. She frowned at that – she'd been alone for years, even when she was surrounded by HYDRA agents. Why should she be frightened of it now?

But when Bucky shifted, pressing his warm right arm against her side and drawing his knees closer to his chest as he subjected himself to his own memories, she knew why. She was getting her mind back, and the prospect of doing that without having someone to confirm her memories, someone to watch over her while she was strangled by nightmares, someone who knew the chaos in her mind… the loneliness of that prospect made her shudder.

She'd remembered something during the night. Not a victim, or a particular brand of torture that had been inflicted on her, but a memory that she suspected predated HYDRA. If she closed her eyes now, she could see it: a young man with dark hair and eyes, laughing over the deconstructed parts of an engine. She couldn't remember the sound of his laughter, but the image of him with his head ducked and his teeth bared in a smile…  _that_ was clear. There was no context with the memory, but she knew it was real.

She could feel more remembrances, more sparks of memory floating just below the surface of her conscious mind. But she couldn't force them to show themselves, no matter how hard she squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. She supposed she'd have to wait. Or go back to sleep, but just the thought of waking with a scream again was exhausting.

The Wyvern arched her back, wincing at the cold that had seeped into her metal-reinforced spine. She turned her head slightly to look at Bucky. He'd looked up from his thoughts, gaze now fixed on the grey sky.

"What made you wake up?" the Wyvern whispered, her voice scratchy from exhaustion.

He shot her a quizzical look.

"What made you… wake up from the programming?" She clarified. "Disobey your orders?"

Bucky nodded his understanding, looking at his folded knees. The stubble on his jaw had grown enough to form a rough beard. It looked uncomfortable. "The target," he eventually murmured. "He kept saying that he knew me, that I knew him, and then… he said something that made me remember. Something that I think… I think I said it to him. Once." He went quiet, lost in thought.

"The target helped me to remember as well."

Bucky looked up. "Really?"

"Yes. We fought him on the street, and he said your name. The idea that a weapon could have a name… it startled me." She shot him a look, her mouth twisting.

"I don't remember," he frowned. "They… wiped us?"

"You, but not me. And you were empty again. While I was on the Helicarrier I heard you speak, heard your voice, and it was  _nothing_ like what you'd been the day before. It… shook something loose, inside me. I remembered that you were my mission, and I realised that either HYDRA's mission would fail, or you would be killed. I made a decision." She shrugged. "And I think knowing that you had a name helped me remember that I had one too."

"Margaret," said Bucky.

Her head jerked up and she stared at him.  _He remembered_?

He gave her a sad smile. "I remember saying it to you before. A few times. I remember the name from…" his brow furrowed. "I think from when you were my mission the first time. Margaret."

His voice saying the name made her shiver. There was an ache in the hollow of her chest, pushing outward.

"It's too long," she whispered.

"The name?"

She nodded, frowning.

He thought about it. "How about Meg?"

The Wyvern – Margaret, Meg – shrugged. Could a name belong to her?

"Do you want me to call you that?" Bucky shifted so he could see her face better in the pale light. The sudden lack of warmth at her side was shocking, and she shivered. "Meg?"

The ache in her chest bloomed, rising up her throat and strangling her. She put her hand to her mouth and realised that there were tears spilling out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

"Hey," Bucky murmured, and suddenly his flesh hand was on her shoulder, a warm weight. "If you don't want me to, I won't–"

The Wyvern –  _Margaret, Meg_  – shook her head. "I want that," she gasped, and a tentative smile spread across her face. "I want a… I want  _my_ name."

Bucky smiled back, and his eyes seemed to glow. "Meg, then."

_Meg_ wiped her tears away, still smiling. The name wasn't quite right, not the perfect fit, but it was so close. And the sound of it in Bucky's voice was a warm thrill down her aching spine. She nodded. "Meg. I'm Meg."

The Wyvern was still inside her, still a large part of how she understood the world. But this: a name, an identity – it felt like a step away from HYDRA, a step towards being a person. She nodded, feeling the name settle over her like a warm cloak.

"I want to find out who I am," she eventually murmured to Bucky, who was still watching her. "I've got the name, and I remember the car crash, and I can work out roughly how old I am. That should be enough to… to track down my identity. Once we get to land."

His grey-blue eyes were warm as he looked at her. "I'll help you, however I can. I've been trying to remember more, but…" he looked away.

"I know," she murmured. "The missions, they… they start to look the same. It's going to take me time, too."

Bucky looked back at her at that, but the remorse and shame didn't leave his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"I know." Meg held his gaze. "I am too." Once she made sure that he could see – again – that she didn't hold him responsible, she nodded decisively. "When we get to land, we'll find out who I am. Then we'll both know." She frowned. "Does it help? Remembering?"

He sighed. "It… hurts. But yeah, I think it helps, too. Knowing that I'm not just the Winter Soldier. If I can remember, then I'm something… more." He trailed off at the end, quiet, and she could see that he hadn't entirely convinced himself. She put her hand on his knee. "You're Bucky," she told him. "And you're my mission."

That made him smile. "You're my mission, too. Meg."

The gift of her name, and the prospect of finding out about herself, got Meg through another sleepless, freezing night on the shipping container. When the coastline of Mexico came into blurry view on the horizon the next day, she and Bucky shared a glance. They'd escaped from HYDRA and whoever else was searching for them in D.C., but they knew they couldn't stop running. They'd stay ahead of their pursuers, chase their foggy memories, and carry out the mission.

 

* * *

 

New Jersey Turnpike, New Jersey

"The Wyvern is…  _Margaret Stark_."

Steve didn't bother responding. Sam had been turning over the revelation for the past few hours while they packed up their research, packed Sam's car, and then took off for New York.

Steve didn't blame Sam for his shock. He was still having trouble wrapping his own head around what Tony had told them. He contemplated it as he drove, keeping half an eye on the traffic around them – they might have dealt HYDRA a heavy blow at the Triskelion, but he was well aware that he hadn't seen the last of them.

Sam's feet were on the dash (which Steve couldn't scold him for, given that it was his car) as he scrolled through old articles about Tony's sister on his phone.

When Steve came out of the ice, he learned about Margaret Stark's existence and death in the same moment. She'd been in Tony's file:  _Sister, Margaret Abigail Stark, born June 2_ _nd_ _1986, died December 16_ _th_ _1991 with parents Howard and Maria in a car crash._  Steve had been… well, he'd been more upset about Howard's death, if he was honest. Caught up in his own haze of grief and guilt after waking up in the future, a child who died twenty years ago was a memorable, distant tragedy, and nothing more.

Sam had shown him photos a couple of hours ago: one a Stark family portrait; Howard holding a swaddled baby in one arm and his poised-looking wife in the other, with an unsmiling teenage Tony standing to the side. Another photo came from a newspaper article titled " _HOWARD STARK'S DAUGHTER FOLLOWS IN HER FATHER'S FOOTSTEPS_."

The accompanying image was of Howard, with white hair and a sharp suit, hands on his hips as he looked down at a cute little girl in a neat blue dress, with dark hair and bright eyes. The girl's arms were spread and her mouth was open, as if she was in the middle of an energetic explanation.

Sam had read lines from the article to Steve, explaining that the photo was taken at Tony's 21st birthday party, that at this point Margaret had exhibited a genius-level IQ, that she had built her own circuit board that year and shown an aptitude for mechanics and engineering. Steve hadn't been aware of the younger Stark child's intelligence – he hadn't even considered it. He knocked his head back into his seat rest. What kind of a team leader and a friend was he, if he hadn't even spared one of Tony's own family members a second thought?

Sam didn't seem to be able to get over looking at the image of that cute kid, and comparing it to the HYDRA assassin who'd come after him with her wings and her metal barbs and her red eyes. "I mean I know it's been a long time… but  _damn_."

Sam went from marvelling over Margaret Stark's presence in the newspapers, to shaking his head at the juxtaposition between genius kid and scary assassin, to poring over information about her death.

"I don't get it," he eventually said. "She  _died_. No disappearance, not even a bit of suspicion surrounding the car crash.  _If_ she's alive, then what about Howard and Maria? How did HYDRA get her?"

Well that was the question, wasn't it? Steve was grappling with what Zola's computer brain had told him and Natasha. The digital consciousness hadn't said it outright, but…

Steve's fingers tightened on the steering wheel, and he had to consciously remind himself not to crush it.

Zola had insinuated that Howard's death wasn't an accident.  _He could have been lying_ , Steve told himself.  _Trying to exaggerate HYDRA's influence, that doesn't mean_ … Steve shook his head. He didn't know who he was trying to kid. With Zola's confession, and the apparent survival of Margaret in the hands of HYDRA – he couldn't overlook that. And who would HYDRA task with killing one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century?

Steve clenched his jaw. He couldn't know that, couldn't even bring himself to formulate the thought.

"Hey," Sam eventually said, looking up from his phone. "I've been looking at this all wrong. It doesn't matter how they got her – if she's still alive then she's  _out there somewhere._ The whole reason we looked into this is because we thought she might be with Barnes. Do you think…?"

"Think what?"

"I don't know, do you think they're still together? Stark could help us look."

"Maybe," Steve said. "Tony wasn't a part of this, and now he's been thrown in the deep end. I don't want to push him." He frowned, and realised that this was where his grappling thoughts had brought him:  _Tony's been through enough. Maybe by not telling him… I'm sparing him_. The thought settled heavy on Steve's shoulders, somehow heavier than the burden of being Captain America had ever felt.

He drove on, and listened to Sam's continuing realisations.

 

* * *

 

Avengers Tower, New York City

Steve and Sam arrived at the tower at night, using Steve's access codes to drive straight from the street into the underground tower carpark.

"Welcome back, Captain Rogers," greeted J.A.R.V.I.S. "And welcome, Mr Wilson."

Sam flinched. "Isn't that the voice from Stark's suit?"

Steve parked the car. "That's J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony's A.I. He's in all the suits, and the tower. Kind of like an electronic butler." His brow was still heavy from his thoughts earlier.

Sam scoffed. "Rich people."

"Steve?"

Steve looked up to see a familiar redhead striding across the fluorescently lit carpark. He closed the car door and squared his shoulders. "Pepper, hi."

Pepper reached them. She was wearing an elegant white power suit and she was as poised as ever, but her face was creased with worry. He winced at the concern in her eyes. "What's going on?" she demanded, looking between Steve and Sam.

"I… uh… what's happened?"

She frowned at him. "Tony went out in the suit earlier and when he got back, I… I only saw him for a second, but I don't think I've ever seen him like that. He's locked himself in his workshop." Pepper pressed her hands together, but Steve could still see them shaking. "And now you're here, so I thought…"

Steve and Sam shared a glance. "It's… probably better if Tony explains," Steve said, wincing at the fear that crossed Pepper's face.

"This is because of what happened with S.H.I.E.L.D., isn't it?"

Before Steve could answer, the elevator doors at the end of the garage opened, revealing Colonel Rhodes. He spotted the trio halfway down the carpark, and went to join them.

"Pepper," he called. "Tony's not answering his phone." He was in his uniform, and looked as if he'd rushed here.

Pepper wrung her hands, glancing from Rhodes to Steve. "I know, he… something's wrong, he's locked his lab. I thought you were on base, what are you doing here?"

Rhodes finally reached them and held up his phone. "I just got a call saying that Tony's family's bodies are being exhumed."

Pepper's hand flew to her mouth, and she turned to stare at Steve. Steve closed his eyes.  _Of course._ He should have realised Tony would want all the evidence.

"Cap? You know anything about this?" Rhodes's voice was tense, and Steve remembered that the man would have known Tony's family. He opened his eyes.

Before he could formulate a sentence, though, J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice rang out in the carpark.  
"Ms Potts, Colonel Rhodes, I have informed Sir of the recent arrivals. He has permitted Ms Potts entry to his workshop."

Pepper let out a long breath. "Okay, okay. Rhodey, Steve, and… I'm sorry…?"

"Sam Wilson," Sam said, and hesitantly held out his hand. It hardly felt like the environment for introductions. But Pepper took his hand with a steely look.

"Alright, you three can settle in, I'll go talk to Tony and see what's going on. Steve, you remember where your rooms are?"

"I do. Thank you, Pepper." He tried to convey with his eyes how bad he felt about the whole situation, and got a weak smile from her in reply. Seconds later she was gone, striding into the elevator and rising out of sight.

Rhodes put his phone in his pocket and sighed. He levelled Steve and Sam with a searching look. "You two alright?"

They nodded.

"Alright, then. I'll see you both upstairs."

 

* * *

 

"Tony?"

Pepper paced into the quiet workshop, wincing as the  _click_ of her heels rang out in the gleaming space. Finally she saw him: he was sitting amongst a field of holographic displays, peering at what looked like a magnified image of cells.

Pepper had only caught a glimpse of his face before he locked himself in his workshop hours ago, but it had made her go cold. She didn't think she'd ever seen a look like that on him: dark eyes burning, his whole face haggard and haunted. It reminded her of the way he'd looked when he thought she'd fallen to her death on the  _Norco_.

Now, he just looked exhausted. There was stubble around his iconic goatee, and heavy bags hung under his eyes.

"Tony," she breathed, and stepped toward him. He didn't try to resist the hug she pulled him into, her arms wrapped around his shoulders. "Tony,  _what_ is going on?"

She pulled back enough to look into his bloodshot eyes.

"Rogers didn't tell you?" he muttered, and flicked away the hologram that Pepper was currently standing in.

"No, he said it was better if you told me."

Tony snorted and pinched his nose. "Well I guess he's got a point. It's…" he sighed. "It's crazy. You won't believe it. I'm not even sure  _I_ believe it, and I've got the evidence right here-"

"Tony."

"I think my sister's alive, Pep."

Pepper froze. "I…  _what_?"

Tony couldn't look at her – he fidgeted with his hands, his eyes flicking around the room. "It's… she's…" he swallowed. "J.A.R.V.I.S.?"

Normally Pepper didn't let Tony get away with having the A.I. speak for him, but from the way Tony's throat was working she didn't think he  _could_ actually speak right now. She lifted her eyes to one of the nearest holograms.

"A blood sample taken during the Helicarrier battle at the Triskelion on the 12th has indicated that Margaret Abigail Stark is alive, as a powerful HYDRA assassin known as the Wyvern." J.A.R.V.I.S. brought up an image of the Wyvern for Pepper. She brought her hand to her mouth. "The blood sample belongs to Miss Stark, without a doubt, but Sir is currently analysing several anomalies within the blood. He has also ordered for the Stark graves to be exhumed, and has asked Doctor Banner to identify the bodies."

Pepper tore her eyes away from the image of the winged assassin, and looked down at Tony. "Oh,  _Tony_ ," she breathed, bringing her hands to his face. He didn't pull away.

"I've been trying to see if there's any way someone could have… have taken a sample of her blood from before, or somehow altered this blood to show…" he shook his head. "But it's  _hers_ , Pepper. There's some weird stuff – higher levels of metal deposits than normal, and some kind of abnormality, I'm still quantifying it, but…" He rolled backward in his chair, away from Pepper, and looked around at his holographic displays. "I can't believe this until I have  _definitive proof_ , Pep, because it's just… it's crazy, Maggie's not… she's not…"

Pepper could see his breaths speeding up, so she closed the distance between them and wrapped him in another hug. Her mind was reeling, but Tony needed her to be calm. He'd told her about his anxiety attacks, and he'd done everything he could to treat them, while supporting her through the Extremis treatments. Just when things had been getting back to some kind of normal, this had happened.

" _If_ it is her, Tony," Pepper tentatively began, "then this could be a good thing."

Tony pressed his forehead into her shoulder. "I don't know. If she's alive, then that means she's  _been alive_ for over twenty one years. And I've never…" he pulled away again, gesturing, and another hologram came up. It looked like a list, with dates and short lines of writing. "This is what J.A.R.V.I.S. has pulled so far from the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump about the Wyvern. There's no file, just references sprinkled here and there in the HYDRA data."

Pepper peered at the scrolling hologram. "What is this?"

Tony picked up a screwdriver from the workbench and started fiddling with it. "From what I can tell? Missions. Assassinations, espionage, extractions. This is just the top of the barrel. The Wyvern… this is a fragment of what she's done. And if the Wyvern is Maggie, Pep, I…" he trailed off again, vaguely gesturing. "I don't know what to do," he eventually finished, hunching over in his chair and pressing his hands to his face.

Pepper didn't know what to say. She put her hands on Tony's shoulders, rubbing back and forth until he pressed his forehead into her stomach. Her hand stroked up the side of his neck and into his hair, trying to impart some kind of comfort.

She didn't know how long they stayed like that, Pepper stroking Tony's hair while he hid his face, but whenever she opened her mouth to say  _it's going to be okay_ , she couldn't bring herself to actually speak the words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we can all agree that Steve's decision to not tell Tony about his parents was stupid, but I had to include it so here we are.


	19. Chapter 19

January 17th, 2014  
Tehuacán, Mexico

Meg opened the stolen laptop, and then froze.

She'd been thinking about nothing else since they'd snuck off the ship at Tampico and travelled south, putting distance between themselves and their escape route. Bucky had remembered more of his missions and drawn into himself, refusing to speak about it, so she'd had little else to occupy her thoughts. She'd contemplated search criteria, date ranges, and sources of data. But now, sitting with the laptop at a beat-up wooden table in a tiny coffee shop, she couldn't bring herself to even touch the keys.

The table wobbled, and Meg looked up as Bucky sat down opposite her. He slid a steaming mug across the table to her, glancing from her face to the open laptop.

They were both still wearing civilian clothes, dusty from the desert, the cotton and canvas unfamiliar against their skin. Meg had her hood pulled up despite the relatively warm Mexican weather. Bucky had no choice but to keep his layers on, to keep his metal arm hidden. He'd bought their coffees with stolen pesos.

Meg slid her fingers around the mug and closed her eyes as warmth seeped into her palms. "What is it?"

"Coffee," Bucky answered, taking a sip from his own mug. "I used to drink it, before. Don't remember there being so many kinds, though," he grumbled.

She glanced at the menu, taking in the long list of coffee drinks. "What kind did we get?"

"Asked for the 'house coffee'. It's pretty good."

Meg thought the fact that they were both bewildered by a very common drink should be concerning, but it helped to talk about something so mundane. She sniffed her mug, and her eyes shot open at the powerful aroma. It was a familiar smell – it recalled flickers of walking through coffee shops on missions, and smelling it on a target or handler's breath.

She took a sip, and though she didn't cough or splutter, Bucky easily read the wince that pinched her face.

"Don't like it?"

The concept of being asked her preference on something was still new, so Meg just shrugged. "It's strong. But…" she closed her eyes again, feeling the caffeine zing through her tired body. "I could get used to it."

When she opened her eyes, Bucky was still looking at her. There was a bit more life in his eyes now – he must have pulled himself out of whatever reverie his new memories had brought on. He nodded at the laptop.

"You don't have to do this, if you don't want to. You know it ain't going to be pretty."

Meg took another sip of her coffee, using the strong punch of flavour to centre herself. Just a week ago she'd been a blank weapon, and now she was sitting, drinking coffee, faced with a  _decision_.

She sighed. "I want to. I only remember HYDRA, that's all my life has ever been. If there's more… I want to know about it."

Bucky nodded and brought his mug to his mouth, surreptitiously surveilling the coffee shop.

Meg got to work.

 

Meg didn't doubt her own skills, but she'd thought this would be harder. She knew better than most how easy it was for a person to slip through the cracks, to have their death amount to nothing more than an accident, a footnote in the papers. In an encrypted internet search she looked for young girls named Margaret who had disappeared or "died" fifteen to twenty five years ago in an incident with a car.

She'd expected her search to take some time – she'd expected to be trawling through crimes, preparing probability vectors, analysing facial features. But she had her answer in an instant.

"Margaret Stark," she breathed, her hands falling away from the laptop. She barely even registered the way Bucky froze in his seat. She stared at the screen, at the image of the dark-haired little girl grinning a gap-toothed smile at the camera as she gestured to a circuit board. The search had instantly yielded that photo, and she could see it was from an uploaded scan of a newspaper article, reading  _HOWARD STARK DEAD IN ROAD FATALITY WITH WIFE, MARIA AND DAUGHTER, MARGARET._

As she'd hoped and feared, the answer to her search prompted new flash-memories: a man with white hair – her father – holding her on his hip; a high, sweet voice accompanying a piano melody; a man with a British accent putting a bandage on her scraped knee; the young man with the engine again, his laughter now ringing clear in her mind; nannies chasing her across a marble floor; a workshop that smelled like engine oil and metal.

Margaret. Stark.

_Maggie._

The memories were bright and loud and echoed with a chorus of emotions, but unlike other times she had remembered, she didn't feel like she'd been physically beaten. Instead, the memories slotted into place in her mind. They were edged with pain, but she was  _glad_ to have them – this was what she had been searching for, each time she closed her eyes and delved into her mind for answers.

Of course, she didn't have everything – just the flash memories, with some context details filling in the gaps. These were nothing like her grey, cold, bitter memories of HYDRA.

Meg – Maggie – opened her eyes.

Bucky was frozen, coffee forgotten, his eyes darting back and forth. She took a deep breath, pulling her remembered identity on like a shirt that didn't quite fit any more. She wasn't that little girl any more, not even close, but she could feel the girl's memories swirling inside her.

"What do you remember?" she asked Bucky, making him jerk and look up at her. She dimmed the laptop display, so the passing waitress wouldn't see Margaret Stark's grinning face.

Bucky hunched in on himself. "Stark."

"The last-  _my_ last name. From the mission?"

He shook his head. "I knew your father."

Maggie had experienced so many earth-shattering revelations in the past days, that she found she didn't have the energy to be overwhelmed by this knowledge. She wrapped her hands around her warm mug, still turning over her new, HYDRA-free memories. She'd been  _happy_ , before. Not always, but enough.

"I knew him," Bucky continued, his voice low and broken. "I knew him, and I… oh god, he recognised me, on the mission." He put his face in his hands, but not before Maggie saw the tears springing into his eyes. The name  _Stark_ was tearing at something inside of him. She didn't know what to do.

"He called me  _Sergeant Barnes._ And then I killed him." Bucky's voice was too low for anyone else to overhear, but his visible distress had caught the waitress's eye. Maggie shot her a fake, reassuring smile, then picked up the laptop and got to her feet. Bucky stood too, on autopilot, and she took his arm and walked him out of the shop.

"I'm so sorry, Meg," he murmured, his face bowed to hide the pain flashing across it. "You're… you're Howard's kid. I knew him, and I killed him."

Maggie marched Bucky into a warm alley behind the coffee shop, senses alert for signs of any other people, then turned him to face her. "Bucky."

He met her eyes. He looked wretched, the sleepless nights and his grief and guilt etching lines in his face. His eyes were bottomless, filled with shadows. He opened his mouth again, and she just knew he was about to start apologising again.

"How did you know him?" she asked. She thought about the man who was her father, with his white hair and low voice and scratchy chin. The thought almost brought a smile to her face.

Bucky's face creased even further. "It's a bit… hazy-"

"I know," she murmured. "Just tell me what you remember."

"He was in the war. Not a soldier, a… contractor. Or something. Smart, like you, but he was loud. He worked with Steve, mainly. We didn't talk much, but I knew he was looking out for Steve, and that was good enough for me. He was a great man, Meg, and I… I'm so sorry, I should have-"

"Stop," she told him. He shut his mouth. " _I_ am sorry." She could see him about to argue with her, so she shot him a  _don't you dare_ look. It was softer than the one she was used to giving to targets and opponents, but it worked just as well. "I'm sorry they made you kill someone you knew before. Someone who helped you and your friend."

Bucky's shoulders dropped, and the anguish in his eyes seemed to mellow. "I should have known. I'm sorry, Meg."

"But you didn't, and I know why. I don't blame you." She leaned back against the brick wall of the alley, still watching Bucky's face.

Bucky was hunched in on himself, a few feet away. "I wish I could go back," he sighed. "I'd change… so many things."

She cocked her head. "But you can't. So what will you do with the choices you have now?"

He looked up at her. "I… Meg, there's no way I can repair the damage I've done, to you or to the countless other people I hurt. I don't know how to pay you back, or make things right."

Maggie felt a flare of irritation. " _I don't know either_ ," she replied. "I don't know how to judge my own crimes, and I'm drowning in them. What do we do, to repay all the blood we spilled? Apologise? Hunt down HYDRA? Spill even more blood? Nothing I can think of sounds even  _remotely_ close to a viable option." She was breathing hard, now, and had to force herself not to crush the laptop in her hands. She hadn't meant to start yelling at him, she'd wanted to ease him back from his guilt and grief. How had she gone so off-course?

She gritted her teeth. "I've known nothing else except the mission for… for over twenty years! I don't remember being taught what was right and what was wrong, and  _apologies_ and  _absolution_ were just words that targets used. So I don't know what you should be doing. I don't know what I should be doing. We're both weapons pretending to be people and we've got to… to just  _deal_ with all the terrible shit we've done, Bucky. We can't change it, so we've just got to deal with it." She fell silent, glaring at him. She didn't think she'd said so many words in a row to him before, and she'd never  _yelled_ at someone before.

Bucky had been still and silent during her tirade. The hunched-up guilt had faded, at least, and he didn't look away from her angry gaze. She could see her words sinking in, but she couldn't quite read him.

"I don't want your apologies,  _Bucky Barnes,_ " she said. The use of his name made him flinch. "I want… I want a chance to learn to be a person outside of HYDRA. I want you with me, because I think you deserve that chance too, no matter what HYDRA made you do. Maybe  _because_ of what they made you do. I want it because the thought of doing this on my own is terrifying, and because I think you understand me, and because I know you'll watch my back. So don't apologise, or try to repay a debt. Just  _be here_."

He watched her for a few more seconds of silence. The alleyway was ringing with her words. Her own guilt was a chasm surrounding her, threatening to swallow her in darkness and blood. The urge to throw herself in was tempting, but she reminded herself that it would serve no purpose: it wouldn't bring her victims back, and it wouldn't make her a better person. She'd have to shoulder the guilt, and take it with her.

"Okay," said Bucky. He'd straightened, and the lines in his face had softened. He nodded, almost to himself. "Okay."

Maggie let out a breath, expelling some of her shaky anger. "Okay?"

"I'll be here. And… I don't deserve to say this, I don't think, but I want you with me too. For the same reasons." Half his mouth lifted in a sad smile. His eyes were glimmering. "I'm trying to work this out, Meg, it's just… it's so much."

She sighed. "I know."

"You help, though," Bucky continued. "You're… a lot smarter than me." He smiled again, a bit less sad this time.

No one had ever taught the Wyvern humility. No one had ever taught it to Margaret Stark, either.

"Don't forget it," she replied, arching an eyebrow. "So… what now?"

Bucky moved, coming to stand beside Maggie against the wall of the alley. "What do you remember?" He nodded at the laptop clutched in her hands.

"Well I didn't get a chance to really read any of it-" she saw Bucky's mouth open and she threw up her hands. "Don't apologise again!" He shut his mouth. "But just the name… I remember. It's jumbled, and I don't really have a lot of details, but… I remember having a family."

"Was Howard a good dad?"

Maggie frowned, pressing the laptop to her chest. "I don't… remember, really. I don't know what makes a man a good father. I think he was… busy. I-" she winced at a new flash-memory: shouting and her own tears. "I remember that he and Tony fought."

"Tony?"

Her eyes widened. "Tony, he's… he was my brother. I had a  _brother_." A tentative smile began to creep up the corners of her lips, but it abruptly fell away. "They killed him, too. They told me, and they  _laughed_." She remembered the soldier laughing at her, remembered thinking  _you are the last._

Bucky let out a long breath. "I'm sorry, Meg."

She didn't think to tell him off for apologising, because she was snapping the laptop open again and resting it on a nearby dumpster. She could still access the coffee shop's Wi-Fi from here, so she opened a new browser window and typed in  _Tony Stark._

When the browser loaded, Maggie closed her eyes before she could see the results. She knew what she was going to see: news articles about his death, seemingly an accident but really orchestrated by HYDRA. She could see him in her mind's eye, youthful and laughing with oil on his hands. She needed just one more second before she saw his death.

Bucky was by her shoulder. " _Meg_ ," he breathed, and something about his voice made her open her eyes. He wasn't commiserating, or concerned about her closed eyes and her silence. He was surprised.

She stared blankly at the open browser window for a good few seconds before she processed what she was seeing.

Not a youthful face with the first results on the internet describing his tragic death. No, the first result was what looked like a very long and detailed Wikipedia page titled  _Tony Stark._

The short blurb underneath the result read:  _Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark is an American billionaire, genius, philanthropist and inventor, and the former CEO of Stark Industries. He is also the armored superhero known as Iron Man, and a member of the Avengers._

Maggie couldn't breathe, and she couldn't draw her eyes away from the words that indicated Tony's present tense:  _is._ He  _is._

Her eyes flickered to the side of the screen, to the top photo results for Tony Stark. It was the face she remembered, but it wasn't so young any more: the man looking back at her was in his forties, with swarthy features, broad shoulders and a complicated-looking beard.

Under the photos, the result bar for the Wikipedia article listed his date of birth _: 29 May 1970 (age 43 years)._ She stared and stared, but there was no death date. Other information included his net worth, his parents' names, and his current partner, but Maggie couldn't process any of it.

"He's alive," she whispered.

She'd only recently remembered that he existed, but the knowledge that he was still alive shifted her world on its axis. Someone who had known her, had most likely loved her, was still out there.

Her hazy pre-HYDRA memories were tinted with an innate acceptance of her big brother's genius, and it seemed that genius had served him well in the passing years. She reviewed her operational knowledge on Iron Man and the Avengers, and tried to match that up with what she vaguely remembered about Tony. It was an odd juxtaposition, trying to fit  _level 6 combatant, advanced weaponry, genius IQ_ , with her memory of the young man, but it made a kind of sense.

She remembered he'd been passionate, always tinkering, and definitely a genius. A flash memory rose to the surface of her mind: standing behind a blast shield with Tony, itchy earmuffs protecting her ears, the both of them whooping as they set off a series of explosions. He'd had his hand on her shoulder.

Maggie smiled to herself. Bucky hovered beside her, closely monitoring her expression, and when she smiled some of the tension slipped out of his frame.

"Meg?"

"Yes?"

"Are you… is this…" he seemed to struggle with the words, and he kept glancing at the laptop screen.

Maggie took pity on him. "They lied to me," she breathed. "He's still alive."

"That's good." A complicated range of emotions crossed Bucky's face. "He looks like Howard."

Maggie looked back at the screen, at the photo of Tony in a sharp blue suit. He'd grown so much. "He looks like Tony."

"He's Iron Man," Bucky said, squinting at the screen.

"Yes," she agreed. "And an Avenger. He must know Steve." She remembered reading in the museum about how Steve Rogers had joined a group of super-powered people. It had also been in his file with HYDRA.

There were a few moments of silence as that sank in. Maggie tried to imagine the young man she'd known working with, maybe being friends with, the principled and sometimes-a-little-shit Steve Rogers that she'd fought against. She took a moment to be glad that Rogers hadn't called for Tony's help in D.C.

Bucky broke the silence. "It looks like he's a powerful man. And he's your family, Meg. He could protect you."

Maggie glanced at Bucky. Now she understood the complicated expression on his face: relief, wariness, grief and hope all tangled together.

She sighed. "I'm not sure that he would want to. He lost his baby sister. As far as he knows, she died when he was still a boy. I'd be giving him back a monster."

"You're not a monster, Meg," Bucky said softly.

She reached out and shut the laptop. "Maybe. But I'm not the little girl he knew either. He's a hero now, and I'm… still working out how to be a person. I'm still dangerous – everything HYDRA made me, made us, it's still in our heads. I don't want to hurt him." She closed her eyes, picturing a handler saying her words and sending her after the man from her memories. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the dread she felt reflected in Bucky's grey-blue eyes. "That's why you didn't want to go to Steve," she murmured.

"Yeah. Do you remember Tony?"

She cocked her head. "Sort of. I remember…" she smiled quizzically at another flash-memory. "He used to call me Maggot."

Bucky's mouth quirked in a smile, but then he grew serious again. "You cared about him?"

"Yes," she murmured. The concept of caring for another person seemed like it should be strange to her, but with the influx of new memories it wasn't quite so alien. "He was everything I wanted to be. And he had my back, even when he was teasing me." She hadn't meant to say that much, it had just… spilled out. She felt a warmth in her chest, edged with pain. Now that she remembered him and knew that he was alive, she ached to see Tony. She wanted to see how he'd changed, wanted to hold him like he'd sometimes let her when she was small, wanted to see him laughing. But…

"That's why I didn't want to go to Steve," Bucky said. "Because I remembered caring about him – you saw the stuff in the museum – and I knew that if I went to him I'd be putting him in danger."

Maggie nodded slowly. She'd thought it through – HYDRA was after her, and Tony seemed to be one of the most visible people in the world. The less she was connected to him, the better. She let out a long, slow breath, and closed her eyes. The memories of her brother were bright, edged with joy, and she held them in her mind like tokens. She'd cared for him, loved him even, and if the ache in her chest was anything to go by, those feelings had returned along with the memories. She couldn't put him in danger.

A thought struck her. "You're not going to disappear in the night to protect me, are you?" She squinted at Bucky.

His lips quirked. "Ain't no danger I could put you in that you aren't in already. Why, you planning on taking off?"

"Well I just yelled at you about how I don't plan on doing that, so no," she replied, still squinting. Her chest was still hurting, so she changed the subject to distract herself. "You know, you've got a Brooklyn accent."

His eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"Yes, it's faint but I've been hearing it every now and then."

His smile returned, slow and hesitant. "That's... well, it's something. Your accent is kind of... it's hard to put my finger on it, but when you're more relaxed, it's definitely American."

Maggie smiled as well, and shook her head. Here they were, standing in an alleyway behind a coffee shop, discussing each others' accents. "Come on," she said, picking up the laptop. "Let's find a safehouse. I want to do more research on my brother – it looks like he's been busy."

As they re-adjusted their civilian disguises, Bucky asked: "Do you think they're friends? Steve and your brother?"

Maggie shrugged. "I don't know. The Tony I remember is from twenty three years ago, and since then it looks like he's been the CEO of Stark Industries and joined a superhero group. A lot can happen to a person in that amount of time. I hope they're friends, though. I… don't like the idea of Tony all by himself." She wondered what it had been like for him, after the car crash. A sharp ache bloomed in the centre of her chest. He hadn't had the knowledge taken away from him, like Maggie had. He'd been living with the death of his whole family for all this time.

Bucky stayed close by her side. "I hope so, too. Must have been rough for Steve, waking up in a new time."

As they left the alley, Maggie realised that she had no reference for what a  _friendship_ entailed. She'd been hoping that Tony had company, she supposed, someone to support him and stop him from making poor decisions (she had a lot of hazy memories about a lot of poor decisions). She looked out of the corner of her eye at Bucky, and wondered what he was to her – first a fellow asset, then an ally, and now…?

"Are we friends?" she blurted out, because her fragmented mind couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Bucky looked surprised, but not averse to the idea. She supposed he was having a similar issue to her, taking himself out of the mindset of  _you are a weapon, weapons do not feel_ , and opening himself to the possibility of having a  _friend._  "Sure," he eventually said, nodding at her. "We're friends. That alright with you?"

She frowned. "I might not be very good at it."

That made him laugh. "Me neither. But of all the things we've got to worry about, I'm not sure that's our biggest issue. We'll figure it out." He bumped his shoulder against hers, and Maggie was so startled by the movement that she stopped in her tracks. She was sure he didn't mean to attack her, so why…

"Sorry," Bucky said, with a wince. "I guess I used to do that."  
She blinked. "Why?"

"I don't know, I think I did it with my friends. It's stupid," he shook his head.

Maggie considered the data. Instinctive movement in reaction to newly established friendship: Bucky clearly remembered having friends before, and how to behave in such a relationship. The movement itself throwing her slightly off balance: a teasing undercurrent, indicative of comfortable physical affection. She cocked her head.

"No, it's alright," she eventually said. "It just… surprised me. I'm not used to people touching me unless they're attacking me or giving me maintenance." That just seemed to make Bucky look sorrier, so she continued. "You remember what it's like to have friends, and that's a good thing. Shoulder bumping is… okay."

To illustrate her point, she marched toward him, angled herself and knocked her shoulder into his bicep. He swayed backward – perhaps she'd hit a little harder than necessary – but smiled.

"Okay," he said. "But maybe let's just agree to… to give each other a little warning before we make any sudden movements or touch each other."

They'd barely touched each other at all except to smother each other's screams before, but if they were going to be friends then perhaps such a negotiation was necessary. "Alright."

"And as for remembering how to be a friend, what I was  _going_ to say before I bowled you over-" his smile widened at her narrowed eyes "- was that there's not much to it. It's like you said: you've just gotta  _be here_."

She nodded. "Friends, then."

"Friends."

On their way out of the alley, Maggie shoulder-checked him again. Bucky would later have to explain that it wasn't necessary to bump him at the end of  _every_ interaction, but for now, it only made him smile.

 

* * *

 

January, 2014  
Avengers Tower, New York City

Steve and Sam didn't see Tony for almost a week after he left a crater in Sam's lawn. They'd continued their search from Steve's rooms in the tower, which Sam had been understandably in awe of. He still sometimes flinched when J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke.

They'd seen Pepper a few times, and she'd reassured them that Tony was more or less okay, and that he was still working in his lab. Rhodes came in and out, nodding hello to Steve and Sam when he saw them. From the expressions on Pepper and Rhodes's faces, Steve guessed that Tony had told them about his sister.

That morning in the communal floor, while they flipped through the Kiev file for clues, Bruce emerged from the elevator looking pale and disturbed. He seemed surprised to see them, and politely welcomed Sam to the tower. He didn't talk about where he'd been, until Steve asked:  
"I heard what Tony asked you to do, Bruce. Are you okay?"

At that, Bruce's face fell and he began fidgeting with his glasses. "I'll be alright. I told Tony that I wasn't that kind of doctor, but I think he wanted me there because… well, it wasn't pretty. It wouldn't have been a good idea for him to be there." He grimaced.

"Because he trusts you," Steve finished. He was pretty sure the doctor knew that, but he wanted to make sure.

Bruce gave him a sad smile. "I guess. I'd better go find Tony, I don't want to give anyone else the results before…"

Steve nodded. "Of course, we'll see you later."

A few hours later, J.A.R.V.I.S. summoned Steve back to the communal floor. Sam had waved him off, promising to finish translating the last few pages of the file.

When the elevator doors opened, Steve immediately saw Tony: he was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, sipping what looked like a glass of bright green juice.

Steve approached, taking in the spectacular view of the city, and then turned to face his teammate. Tony looked a little better than he had in D.C., with fewer lines of exhaustion on his face. He still looked like he'd been working flat out, though, in well-worn jeans and a shirt.

"Tony," Steve began. "How are you doing?"

Tony looked away from the windows. "How am I – Jesus, Steve, you could at least pretend to have an ounce of selfishness, you make the rest of us feel bad."

Steve shrugged. "As Natasha likes to tell me, I'm not very good at pretending."

"Hmph," Tony rolled his eyes, and took another sip of the frighteningly green drink. "It's recently been brought to my attention that you're looking for someone."

Steve glanced at the ceiling, his reflex reaction whenever J.A.R.V.I.S. was brought up. "Yeah, Sam's been helping me."

"And whoever it is," Tony continued, "You've been looking for them since the Helicarrier thing." He took Steve's silence as confirmation. "See here's where I get stuck, Steve, because if this was some big bad HYDRA asshole, you'd have brought in me and the rest of the team. Romanoff would have stuck with you. And for whatever reason, you needed to find out who the Wyvern was to find your guy." The flash of pain that crossed Tony's face at the mention of the Wyvern was fleeting, but Steve spotted it. "So then I thought back to that phone call where you asked for my help, and I remembered you saying that you knew who the emo with the metal arm was.

"But here's the thing, Steve, I've been combing through the footage of the Helicarrier battle, and through the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump, and I've got  _nothing_ on that guy's identity. Not a single photo of his face, or even a pseudonym." Tony stared at Steve a moment longer, taking in his hard expression. "Who is he, Steve? What does he have to do with the Wyvern?"

Steve hadn't wanted to bring his teammates into this. But Tony was right – Steve's search for Bucky had uncovered the Wyvern's identity. They were connected.

"Bucky Barnes," Steve said, and watched the instant recognition flare in Tony's eyes. "I recognised him when his mask came off on the street. HYDRA got him after he fell from the train in '45, turned him into this…" Steve felt his face twisting against his will, so he clenched his fist and cleared his throat. "They called him the Winter Soldier, used him as an assassin. He didn't recognise me, but then after the Helicarriers… he must've pulled me out of the water." He met Tony's eyes.

Tony let out a breath. "And the Wyvern? My sister?" His eyes were bright.

"Fought with him for HYDRA."

Tony finished his green drink and began pacing, eyes darting back and forth. Steve could almost see his mind working. "Okay, so whatever they did to Barnes they must have done to her. Because Maggie would have  _come back_ ," he said, voice roughening. "She wouldn't…" He took a few long, slow breaths and Steve was reminded of the panic attack in Sam's living room.

"So it is her, then?" Steve asked, voice low.

Tony stopped pacing, his back to Steve. "Yeah. No doubt about the blood results, and Bruce said… Bruce said that the bones from her grave aren't hers. They're from a Jane Doe, and they show signs of Adamantium experimentation."

Steve didn't know what to say.

"So either HYDRA staged that accident, and… and killed my parents-" Steve couldn't see Tony's face, but he could hear the grief in his voice. "Or Maggie survived the accident and HYDRA just… took the opportunity. I've been reading up on them, they had plants everywhere. It could've been… a doctor in the hospital, a morgue attendant…" Tony trailed off. "There's nothing in the dump about that night. Whatever happened, it never made it onto any digital files that I can find. I guess it doesn't matter either way – Maggie's been with them this whole time."

"I'm sorry, Tony." It was all Steve could offer – he would keep his secrets.

Tony took a shuddering breath and turned around. His eyes were bright, but neither of them mentioned it. "You fought her, right?" His gaze was searching. "What did you… what was she like?"

Steve blinked – he hadn't expected that question. At the time, the Wyvern had just been… HYDRA. An enemy. His only thought had been to  _survive,_ and then he'd been so wrapped up in Bucky…

"She's strong," he eventually said. "I only actually fought her for a few seconds, but she hit almost as hard as me."

"Serum, then," Tony said. "I guessed as much, there's some weird indicators in the blood."

"Sam went up against her twice, he could probably tell you more, but…" Steve didn't know how to tell Tony that his sister had looked like a demon and fought like a machine. "If they did to her what they did to Bucky, Tony… He was cold, relentless. They took away everything I recognised about my friend and turned him into a… a-"

"A weapon," Tony finished. He looked haggard. "Yeah, I get the picture. Jesus." He ran a hand over his face. "But you're going after him?"

Steve nodded. "I think I got through to him. Either way, he's still my friend, and if I can help him then I will."

Tony straightened. "And you think the Wyvern is with him. That's why you came to me for help." He kept talking before Steve could answer. "That's smart; no bodies, similar situations, yeah. J.A.R.V.I.S., let's expand our search criteria – any sign of a metal-armed man in the D.C. area?"

Steve's eyes widened – he knew Tony had resources, but to access an entire city's CCTV…

"I have found one still from a CCTV camera from the day of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fall," came J.A.R.V.I.S.'s smooth voice. Tony waved his hand, and the windows immediately blacked out.

A holographic display popped up in the middle of the room, showing a pixelated CCTV still: a dark metropolitan street, with cars captured mid-motion. For a moment Steve didn't know what he was looking at, until J.A.R.V.I.S. zoomed in on the very corner of the image. On the sidewalk stood a man in a dark outfit with a gleaming metal arm, his back to the camera. He stood beside a woman in a similar dark outfit, holding something metallic under her arm. The image was horribly pixelated, showing only the shapes of their bodies and the glint of metal, but Steve knew what he was looking at.

"This still was captured a block away from a suspicious fire at an abandoned bank building," J.A.R.V.I.S. continued. "Emergency services found warped machinery and weapons in the vault, and a hidden entrance from the bank to the building next door. Police are currently investigating."

"HYDRA?" asked Steve, still staring at the blurry image of Bucky and his metal arm.

"Given the timing of the fire and the amount of weapons discovered, it is probable that the bank served as a HYDRA facility. The police are yet to trace the building ownership, but I have followed a trail of dummy holdings and shell companies back to a known S.H.I.E.L.D. – or rather, HYDRA – bank account."

Tony was staring at the woman beside Bucky. "It's her."

"Body type and uniform do match stills of the Wyvern, sir," agreed J.A.R.V.I.S..

Tony whirled to face Steve. "How do you feel about pooling resources, Rogers? My significant financial and technological resources and my omnipotent A.I., in exchange for your plucky sidekick?"

Steve knew he should probably defend Sam, but that wasn't really the main focus right now. "If you're sure, Tony."

He waved his hand. "We both know that I'm going to look for Maggie and you're going to look for Bucky no matter what, so we may as well be on the same team. Historically, teamwork has been  _okay_  for us. Remember when we saved the world?"  
Steve smiled, shaking his head. "I remember, Tony. Alright, where do we start?"

Tony clapped his hands. "Well I'm already combing through the data dump. Haven't found anything about the Winter Soldier, at least not yet, but I'm sure J.A.R.V.I.S. got on that as soon as you mentioned it…?"

"Of course, sir," added J.A.R.V.I.S., and Steve could have sworn that the A.I. sounded  _affronted._

"Great. I've found a few references to the Wyvern. No file or anything, but every now and then in the HYDRA shadow data there's a mention of her: if there's mission details about an assassination or extraction or something, it usually just says  _The Wyvern succeeded_ or  _The Wyvern was consulted._ I did find this-" he did something complicated with his hands, and the hologram of the CCTV still changed into a block of text, with a section highlighted: it looked like correspondence between a technician and Secretary Pierce, and Steve narrowed his eyes.

The highlighted section read:  _Wyvern consulted on Insight programming. Rewrote section 13a for more efficient targeting._

Tony grimaced at Steve's widened eyes. "Yeah. So it looks like the Wyvern wasn't just their attack dog." He waved the hologram away. "Anyway, Rhodey knows about Maggie, and he's not going to say anything to anyone. Pep's keeping quiet, too."

"Are they okay?" Steve asked. "I know Rhodes must have known her… before."

"He's… dealing. I don't think he really gets the whole terrible HYDRA assassin thing yet. He said he'd always regretted not taking Maggie flying when he had the chance." Tony's eyes grew alarmingly bright, before he rolled them and got back to the point. "Anyway, we'll find them and then we'll deal with the evil assassin thing. You got anything?"

Steve sighed. "Not really. A Soviet file from the forties to the seventies and a few leads on HYDRA bases. Sam's with the files now."

"Great," Tony said, and began striding to the elevator. "HYDRA bases, decent place to start. J.A.R.V.I.S.?"

"Compiling leads, sir."

After a moment of hesitation, Steve shook his head and followed his friend into the elevator. This was how it should be, the two of them working together to find their lost family. Whatever had happened in the past… well. He'd be sparing Tony from more pain if he kept Zola's taunts to himself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy long, emotional chapter, Batman!
> 
> Also: Dear Steve, you are a stupid, beautiful bastard.


	20. Chapter 20

February, 2014  
Salina Cruz, Mexico

_"Bucky!"_

_The frozen air tearing at his clothes, the cold bite of metal under his fingers. His heart pounding, like it wants to jump out of his chest._

_"Hang on!" An order he desperately wanted to obey. "Grab my hand!"_

_The metal groaning, and then – "No!"_

_A whirlwind of movement, and screaming, and the blue of Steve's uniform spinning into white and black and…_

Bucky jerked, eyes flying open. His right hand flew to his shoulder, feeling the unyielding metal, and his chest heaved for breath. His eyes darted around, taking in the tiny apartment with its tiled floors, the sun streaming in through the orange curtains, and Meg. She sat at the desk against the wall, her fingers hovering over a laptop. But she was looking over her shoulder at him, taking in his wild eyes and frantic breathing. She didn't have to say it, because he saw it in her eyes:  _what do you remember?_

He shook his head, wanting to escape the freezing winds and the sickening sensation of falling. He ran his hands over his face and reminded himself of the facts:  _you're in the future, away from HYDRA, with Meg. Everything in your head that hurts is just… memories._ He let out a long breath. Meg watched him for a moment longer, her eyes questioning, and when he nodded at her she turned back to the laptop.

He sighed. The order his memories came back in made no sense – one moment he would be remembering the smell of blood in a muddy European trench, and the next he'd be remembering the bite of ice on his face in the cryo chamber. They kept slipping in and out, unbidden. He wanted some way to order his memories, make sense of them. He remembered soldiers hunching over notebooks back at base in the war, frantically scribbling with pencil stubs, and he wondered if he ought to try it.

He'd written letters to his sisters – he closed his eyes again at a fresh bloom of pain – and that writing had been cathartic in its own way. He obviously didn't tell his sisters about the deaths he'd seen and caused, but putting his thoughts down on paper had made him feel a bit more real. It was something to consider.

He and Meg had travelled south through Mexico, changing up their modes of transport and their appearances. Today Bucky was in a windbreaker and loose trousers, with his hair tucked into a cap. Meg had siphoned some HYDRA funds – completely untraceable and not an amount large enough to wave any red flags – to purchase the clothes. She'd imitated the local women and wore a light green shirt with a long floral skirt and sandals.

Bucky didn't think he'd ever seen her so casually dressed – he didn't remember going on any infiltration missions with her. It had been strange at first to see her in colors and patterns, when his clearest memories of her were of a black, winged silhouette with red eyes. But he found that it suited the person she was becoming.

She was a constant surprise – he remembered noticing that she was something more than a weapon while they were both with HYDRA, but watching her 'becoming a person,' as she put it, was fascinating.

He remembered, kind of, what it had been like to be Bucky. He'd had friends, jobs, had been twenty-seven when HYDRA got him. Her only frame of reference was her hazy memories of being a child. But she was already so changed from the way she'd been with HYDRA – she constantly surprised him when she smiled, or laughed, or gave him a kind word.

He knew that the things that had been done to the two of them, that they had done, were the sorts of things that could break a person; turn them into a shivering, screaming mess. There were times when he retreated into himself and thought he was broken beyond repair, but then he'd recall one of the good memories, or Meg would put a hand on his flesh shoulder, and he'd open his eyes and keep going.

He knew she had her own demons, but she had a fiery determination to put HYDRA behind her and learn to be a person. Not only had she freed herself, but she'd forgiven him, and wanted him with her. He still couldn't wrap his head around it.

Watching her now, her dark hair loose around her shoulders and her bare forearms resting against the edge of the desk, Bucky shook his head. She was passionate, and honest, and startlingly kind. Despite HYDRA's machinery and brainwashing, this was the person she was becoming, and it took his breath away. Even though his memory was useless, he knew he'd never met anyone like her.

Now, with the hem of her skirt brushing the white tile floor, Meg watched a video of her obviously drunk brother speaking at an event. The video looked to be a few years old.

She'd been spending the last few days researching her brother at every chance she got. She told Bucky about Tony, when he asked. She'd told him about her memories of a gifted, arrogant, reluctantly loving brother. She told him about the weapons manufacturer who changed his mind. She told him about the hostage, the hero, the Iron Man.

Bucky could tell she was proud of what her brother had accomplished, but he sensed that she was frustrated by what she found – she could find everything the public knew about Tony Stark, but had no indication of what he was really like. Bucky didn't know how to help her – this was a man whose life he had personally ruined. He had killed his parents and kidnapped his sister for a lifetime of servitude under HYDRA. He didn't articulate these thoughts to Meg, as she'd made her feelings on the matter perfectly clear, but they weighed heavy on him.

Her research wasn't easy on Meg – yesterday she had suddenly recalled another mission, and had to run to the bathroom to throw up. He'd tried to convince her to take a break, but she was determined to find out about her brother.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the tinny sound of an explosion – Meg had opened another video, of Iron Man fighting drones in Flushing Meadows. She'd watched it before, but she kept coming back to it and other videos of Iron Man fighting.

Bucky watched the cellphone footage of the red-and-gold suit slaloming to avoid drones and rocketing through civilian structures. He shook his head.

"Well it seems you've both got a thing for flying." As soon as he said it he froze – just because he could see how much Meg enjoyed flying, despite what HYDRA had done to her, didn't mean he should bring it up. But Meg just looked over her shoulder and smiled. On the screen, Iron Man flew right through a metal sculpture of the globe, tricking the pursuing drones into colliding with it. The orange glow of the resulting explosions lit up the side of Meg's face.

She smiled, and added: "and explosions." She closed the laptop – a new one, stolen from a tech store a few hundred miles away – and began to stand. "We should find something to eat, I think I saw a-"

She didn't get to finish her sentence. When she was halfway up her whole body seized, her head snapped back, and she crumpled to the floor.

"Meg!" Bucky dove across the floor but didn't catch her in time – her head thunked against the white tile. Her whole body was taut as a bowstring, spine arched and the muscles in her arms and legs twitching with how tightly they were clenched. Bucky reached out to grab her arms, but as soon as he came into contact with her skin he jerked his hand away, shouting.

"Meg, what–" that had been an electric shock, but he didn't understand– "Meg, what's wrong?" He shuffled around so he could see her face – she was still conscious, staring at him with wide, panicked eyes.

She let out a groan through clenched teeth and scrabbled against the floor with her feet. "Moorings," she managed to gasp out. "Find – kill switch!"

When Bucky realised what was happening he swore, and darted toward the bed to grab the comforter. He covered his right hand with it, then knelt beside Meg and turned her over. She groaned again, and her whole body quaked with pain and the electric current running through her. Using the covered hand, Bucky pulled up the back of her shirt and looked at the metal sockets in her back. They didn't look different from when he'd helped her attach her wings; two round metal holes with various connectors and terminals inside.

"Talk to me Meg, what am I looking for?"

"Inside," she gasped. Her face was pressed against the tile, and her hands were clenched into fists. The skin on her back was twitching. "Converter, millimetre smaller than the others-"

Bucky's sharp eyes picked out a slightly smaller circular converter in each wing mooring. "I see them, what do I do?"

"Press in, rotate… ninety degrees clockwise," her voice was shaking with the effort of pushing out each word. Bucky swore again – the converter was obviously only large enough to fit a narrow screwdriver head, not his large fingers. He glanced around the room, until he finally spotted the narrow plastic toggles on the drawstring of his windbreaker.

"Shit," he said, as he yanked out the drawstring. "Meg, which side?"

If she noticed his chosen tool, she didn't say anything. Her body was so rigid she looked like she was about to snap. "Think… left," she grunted.

Bucky shoved the plastic toggle into the converter on the left mooring, and rotated. It seemed to work – with a pneumatic hiss, the interior plating of the mooring loosened and rose up.

"Careful," Meg huffed. "Lift – gently."

Using the comforter as a buffer, Bucky gripped the metal and lifted it like she'd said. The socket rose out of her back, but a forest of wires trailed from it and into Meg's body.

"Meg, what am I-" he cut himself off at the sight of a green LED light on a chip that looked out of place. The chip was clamped around a section of the wires. Bucky described it to Meg, and she nodded frantically.

"Get it off," she gasped. "Scissors, rip it, I don't care-"

Bucky flipped a knife from the holster at the small of his back. The knife had a rubber grip, so he held the mooring steady with his protected flesh hand and used his metal limb to cut away the chip.

The second the chip disconnected from the wires, Meg slumped bonelessly into the floor with a sigh. Bucky didn't bother asking if it had worked, because the sheer relief in her body was evident.

"Thank you," Meg breathed, the words muffled by the floor. "Just lower the mooring back in, it'll connect itself." He followed her instructions, throwing away the comforter when the mooring clicked back into place.

"I'm going to roll you over now," he warned, and eased Meg onto her back. She went willingly, meeting his eyes when she was settled. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She grunted, and rolled her shoulders. "I'm okay. Give me that–"

He handed her the chip, which now glowed red. Still lying on her back, Meg brought the chip to her face and scrutinised it. "It's not a tracker," she eventually said. "Doesn't have the right components. I took the trackers out of your arm and my wings."

"So what is it?"

She sat up with a groan, pulling her shirt down her midriff. "A kill switch, designed to run an electrical current through my body at a high enough voltage to immobilise me, but not enough to kill me. There were two in my wings and one in your arm, which I removed, but they must have wanted to control me with or without the wings." She let out a long breath, and crushed the chip in her fist. "Whatever's left of HYDRA must have noticed we've gone missing. If I hadn't taken out the other stuff they'd have tracked us and immobilised us both."

Bucky was having trouble staying calm – he'd known, cognitively, that HYDRA had put these measures in place to control their weapons. But to see it in action, to see Meg with her body rigid and her face screwed up in pain…

Meg looked up at the loud whirring of his metal arm and took in his dark expression. "Thank you, Bucky," she said. "If it weren't for you…"

The thought of Meg lying alone, electrocuted into submission, only made him angrier. They must have known that the trackers were broken, so whoever had hit that button had done so knowing that they'd never find the Wyvern, they'd done it just to make her  _suffer_ –

A hand on his metal forearm shook him out of his thoughts. Meg rested her hand there, not squeezing or pushing, just resting it. He glanced at her face.

"I told you I was going to touch you," she said. "But you were lost in your head."

"It's okay," he sighed, and sat back on the tile. "Are you alright?"

She nodded. "Once the current is gone it doesn't hurt any more."

"You hit your head."

She put her fingers against her scalp and probed the bump. It made her wince, but she shrugged. "It's not bad."

They sat on the cool tile in silence for a few moments, with the crumpled comforter and Bucky's singed drawstring cord between them. They'd been doing relatively well, remembering who they used to be and becoming people. The reminder of HYDRA felt like a dark shadow pressing down on them.

"I helped them make me into this," Meg eventually whispered. Bucky looked up. "I helped them turn me into a weapon, I… I helped to produce the Adamantium, to design the cybernetic linkup, to construct the wings. They wouldn't have had nearly the amount of success that they had if they didn't have my mind."

"Meg-"

"Sometimes I knew what I was doing," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "I knew they were going to cut me open and put metal on my bones, but I helped them anyway. When I figured out I was going to fly, I… I was  _excited_." Her eyes widened, and Bucky recognised the horrified look of recollection on her face. "When you first brought me to HYDRA, the Project Leader asked me if I wanted to be made strong. And  _I said yes._ " Her voice was low with horror and self-disgust.

"I remember that," Bucky interjected. "I remember you were a little girl, surrounded by men with guns, and you said that you wanted to be stronger than them. That doesn't make you-"

She shook her head, and interrupted again. "But I should have realised, I should have known what they were going to do. And I still can't wish myself to be weak, because I wouldn't be able to protect myself. I can't wish my wings away, because I  _love flying_." Her voice was choked with tears now. "I think that's what makes me a monster – because I knew what was going to happen, and I said yes anyway. You… you didn't have a choice, Bucky, and when you remembered you fought back. I just… gave up."

"Meg, you can't blame yourself for that–"

But she just shook her head again, and climbed to her feet. "You don't have to do that, Bucky. Thank you for helping me, I'm just going to… I'll be in here." She walked into the bathroom, the only other room in the flat, and shut the door. Alone on the tile floor, Bucky pressed his face into his hands. He couldn't help but feel like he'd let her down.

 

* * *

 

They continued travelling south for the next few days, crossing the border into Guatemala and then Honduras. Meg hadn't mentioned the kill switch or what she had remembered since their conversation in the Salina Cruz flat, and Bucky didn't know how to bring it up. They both still woke up screaming at night, and some days he got so caught up in his own head he felt he barely had any connection with reality. Meg steered any conversation they had away from the topic of memories and guilt – usually she only spoke to discuss their ever-evolving contingency plans, or to ask him questions about food and shelter.

In Guatemala, however, she'd offered to look at his metal arm and find a way to reduce the pain in his shoulder. She was hesitant when she asked, as if the mere mention of it would make him angry, but he agreed instantly. The fact that she'd even thought about it, in amongst all the other shit they had to deal with… he didn't know how she'd become so  _kind_ after everything HYDRA made her do, but he was glad for it.

Of course she needed tools to work on the arm, so they had to wait to find an appropriate workshop. They eventually found a car repair shop in Comayagua that was locked up at night, and broke in through the roof.

Now, sitting shirtless on a stool with his arm balanced on a dusty bench, Bucky couldn't stop thinking about everything Meg had said back in Salina Cruz. She sat on the other side of the bench, hunched over the open panels of his arm with a precision tool in her hand. She was peering at the uppermost part of the limb, where metal met flesh. So far she hadn't touched it at all, except to open the panels and manipulate the limb this way and that.

Bucky remembered HYDRA technicians working on his arm, but the sight of Meg holding tools over the limb didn't bring back any fear – he knew she was doing it to help him, and not to make him a better weapon. Her touches were gentle, and she explained everything she did before she did it.

So Bucky wasn't worried about the arm. He watched her face as she worked, illuminated by a single lamp. The rest of the workshop was dark, with cars and machinery and mechanical lifts in the shadows.

"If you won't blame me for what happened," he eventually said, "then don't blame yourself."

She froze, but didn't look away from the wiring in his shoulder. "It's not the same," she eventually murmured.

"I know, but just…" he sensed her discomfort, and sighed. "If you want to walk away, you can do that. I didn't mean to trap you."

She didn't leave, so he continued. "You were  _five_  when I took you. You were alone, and scared, and no matter how smart you were then, your decision  _made sense._ That's why the Project Leader gave you even the appearance of a choice: because he'd manipulated you into only having one answer. And then you spent decades with HYDRA – no one could blame you for finding even a shred of happiness. Loving to fly, that makes you human, not a monster. And the fact that you got out at all is a goddamn miracle, after everything they put us through. You weren't ever giving up, Meg. You were getting stronger."

Her eyes were shining, and she'd put down the precision tool, but he wasn't done. "I'm not any better than you just because I never got asked if I wanted this or not. I might be worse, because I made the decision to go out and kill people long before HYDRA had ever even heard of me." He sighed. "I know… coming to terms with what you remember is something that you've gotta do on your own. But I don't think you're a monster, Meg. You're sitting here fixing my arm because I told you it hurts.  _That's_ the kind of decision you should judge yourself by."

Meg let out a shuddering breath and braced herself against the bench. Bucky wanted to reach out to her, but the metal arm had exposed wires and it would be awkward to reach around with his right arm.

Eyes bright with tears, Meg met his gaze. "I can't just  _not_ feel guilty any more, Bucky. Everything I've done…"

"I know," he murmured, holding her gaze. "Neither can I. But you… you can't go on hating yourself. You gotta know, in your head, that you didn't have a choice. Might not change what you feel, but don't go around thinking that you chose to be a murderer."

Meg wiped her eyes, and Bucky watched her process the words. She had a wickedly smart mind, he knew that, but she seemed to have trouble processing the moral and emotional side of things.

"Alright," she eventually whispered. "Thank you, Bucky."

"Just carrying out the mission," he replied.

She smiled and shook her head at him. "Then I'd better get back to my mission, hadn't I?"

"When you're ready," he murmured. His arm chose that moment to let out a loud whirring noise, making Meg laugh softly. She wiped away the last of her tears, picked up the precision tool, and went back to scrutinising his exposed arm.

 

* * *

 

February, 2014  
Medellín, Colombia

" _El próximo autobús a Bucaramanga sale en cuarenta y cinco minutos_." [" _Next bus to Bucaramanga leaves in forty-five minutes._ "]

Maggie leaned forward in her creaking plastic seat to adjust the backpack sitting by her feet, simultaneously reassuring herself that her wings were close by, and did another sweep of the bus terminal for surveillance. There was only one camera on the far wall behind them, and no one in the vicinity gave the pair of former assets a second glance.

They appeared to be any other tourist couple, bus-hopping around the country. Bucky, sitting casually with his arm thrown over the back of his seat, was dressed as usual in jeans and a long t-shirt, with light gloves and sunglasses. He was dressed a little warmly for the weather, but in February didn't draw too much suspicion. He'd started shaving, so his jaw was smooth. He was also wearing a straw hat, because the sight of him in it had made Maggie laugh.

She'd noticed that when they bought or stole clothes, he tended to choose the comfiest options, in green and blue. She tried different styles; for disguise purposes and because she hadn't had a choice in what she wore since she was a child, and she wanted to experiment. Today she had on a blonde wig, which itched at the back of her scalp, and large sunglasses. She only had to worry about concealing her back and the soles of her feet, so she'd opted for loose, high waisted white pants and a red floral top. She found that she liked patterns and colours and flowy clothes, and in the colder temperatures enjoyed wearing knitted sweaters.

The clothes weren't doing anything to soothe her current anxiety, though. Something about the busy terminal with its echoing ceilings and creaking plastic seats was putting her on edge. She wanted to tell herself that it was her instincts telling her something was wrong, but she knew it wasn't. There was no sign of surveillance, no askance looks.

It might have been that she'd had another sleepless night – she and Bucky often still woke screaming, and when she closed her eyes at night she didn't know what memories her tormented brain was going to relive.

They'd been on the move for over a month now, never staying anywhere long, usually hiding out in safehouses locked away from the world. Maggie had managed to ease some of the pain in Bucky's arm in that darkened workshop a few weeks ago, by updating the wiring in his shoulder. She knew it still pained him sometimes, because there was only so much she could do from the mechanical side of things when half of the issue was in the flesh-and-blood part of his shoulder. She'd started researching biology and joint reconstruction, to see if there was anything she could do.

They constantly swapped out their tech whenever they could, to avoid tracking, but they wanted a computer with them at all times so they could track the news coverage of the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and be alerted if there was any sign of a hunt for the Winter Soldier or the Wyvern. So far they hadn't found anything public, but it would be too much of a risk to hack into intelligence agencies to see what they were up to. But from what Maggie had found, it looked like HYDRA cells were being located and shut down the world over.

The thought of HYDRA sent a shudder down her spine. She leaned closer to Bucky. He was writing in a notebook, which he had bought a few weeks previously. He said it helped to put the memories somewhere physical, so they existed outside of his own disjointed mind. Maggie hoped it helped. She wasn't having trouble with the impermanence of her memories, so much as she struggled with what the memories contained: death, pain, blood and her own guilt.

The anxiety in Maggie's gut tightened. "Tell me something," she murmured, and Bucky looked up with a questioning glance.

She swallowed. "I don't like the waiting," she explained. "It reminds me… it's like…" she took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap, trying to control her outward appearance.

"Like waiting for a mission," Bucky finished. He closed his notebook and turned to face her. "You're okay Meg, you're not there anymore. You're here, with me."

She had considered asking Bucky to call her Maggie, instead of Meg, but something stopped her. Meg was the name he'd given her, because she'd wanted a name and  _Margaret_ hadn't sounded right. He hadn't guessed correctly, but something about the nickname made her feel a little warmer. It might have been the fact that if Bucky could give her a nickname, he was another step away from the Soldier; it might have been that she felt so different from the Maggie of so many years ago. It might have just been that she liked the way Bucky said the name, low and kind and for  _her._

"Just keep breathing," Bucky was saying. While Maggie had been monitoring press coverage and researching things like joint reconstruction and her own brother, Bucky had been taking active steps to fix his brain. The breathing thing was one of the first he'd learned about, and any time his own memories got too much, she could hear him taking long, slow breaths – in through the nose, out through the mouth. She tried it now, and found that it helped ease the frantic edge to her nerves. She remembered Bucky saying that he used to help Rogers with his breathing when he had asthma attacks.

"Tell me something," she repeated.

"What do you want to hear?"

"Anything – something from your notebook, a memory, just… anything." In through the nose, out through the mouth.

"How about the Howlies? They were a bunch of crazy bastards, you would've hated working with them."

She nodded to indicate her acceptance of the topic.

Bucky leaned back in his seat and put his flesh arm on the back of her chair – not touching, but providing warmth and support. "Okay, so the first one of 'em I met was Dugan, he was in the 107th with me. First conversation I ever had with him, he punched me in the face."

Bucky told her about the Howling Commandos for nearly half an hour, detailing their battles and in-jokes and embarrassing stories. Maggie was enthralled in the first five minutes, her panic fading away, but she didn't stop him talking. He didn't say it outright, but she could tell that his men had loved him, trusted him with their lives. Rogers was the icon that anyone would follow into battle, but Bucky had been  _Sarge_ , the one they turned to when they needed a smoke or a drink or a friendly word.

She could hear in his voice how much he missed them. She'd looked them up, early on – they'd all died before Rogers came out of the ice.

"I don't think I would have hated working with them," she eventually said.

"Did you hear the story about the explosives in the corset?"

She smiled. "Yes. They were risk-takers, but they were clearly effective. The Wyvern mightn't have worked well with them, but I… I like the sound of them."

Bucky smiled, eyes crinkling. "I think they'd have liked you too – some of 'em probably a little too much."

"Well now that I know how they spent their down time, that would definitely not be an issue."

Bucky laughed, and she heard his metal arm faintly whirring. Biting her lip, she decided to ask a question that had been bothering her for a while now.

"When you were a POW at that HYDRA base… was that when they gave you the serum?"

His smile slipped away.

"The serum is what made Captain America strong," she continued. "My father helped to make Captain America strong, and the blue liquid from his briefcase made  _me_  strong. And you're not a normal man, Bucky, even without the arm." She kept her voice carefully neutral.

He glanced down at his closed notebook. "Yeah. Zola gave me… something."

"But then you fought with your friends for more than a year. Did you know?"

He sighed. "Sometimes I think I knew I was different, but most of the time… I don't know, it was easy to ignore it, with everything else going on. I spent most of that year seconds away from a heart attack thanks to Steve running headfirst into battlefields."

Maggie smiled and shook her head. "It's a wonder you didn't have a stroke right there in the European theatre, what with Rogers  _and_ the Commandos."

"It was a near thing," he agreed. "Now come on, you've got to tell me something now."

She'd made him talk about Zola, so she agreed that was a fair enough deal. She didn't have as many stories to tell as Bucky, given that he'd had about twenty years more life experience outside of HYDRA than her, but he always seemed to enjoy what she could remember. Stories about her family made him quiet and melancholy, but she could sometimes make him laugh with stories of Tony and Howard's antics, or make him smile with stories about her mother. But she'd been remembering another member of the family lately.

"Dad had a butler," she began. "His name was Edwin Jarvis, and he was with Dad since the end of the war. I think people thought it was a bit silly, having this very British butler serving the family, but Jarvis was… he was  _kind_. Dad was busy, so most of my memories are of Jarvis – eating dinner with me, making sure I kept out of trouble, listening to my rambling. He was always there, and he loved us so much. I remember he used to tell me stories about the adventures that he and Aunt Peggy had back in the day-"

Bucky sat up a bit straighter. "Peggy Carter?"

"Yes, I believe so. You knew her?"

"Yeah, she was… well, she was Steve's girl, but she'd have knocked me out for calling her that. She was an agent with the SSR, she was great." He smiled at the memories.

"Well she certainly seemed so, from the stories. I know she came around the mansion every now and then, but I don't really remember her… most of the time she was there to talk to Dad. They named me after her."

She reminisced about Jarvis and Aunt Peggy for a little while longer, until their bus was ready for departure. In the line for the bus, they stood with Maggie's arm looped through Bucky's metal limb – partly to maintain their cover as a couple, and partly to prevent members of the jostling crowd from noticing that his arm was not quite as it seemed. Maggie liked the soft whirs and clicks the arm let out, and they both liked knowing that the other was watching their flank.

"You know," Bucky said as they boarded the bus, "it doesn't have to be like this."

"Like what?" She let him take the window seat – if there was enemy contact, he could smash the window with his metal arm, and she would handle the aisle space.

"The nightmares, the panicking, the mess in both our heads. I've been doing some research, and there's… there's ways of getting better." He was avoiding her gaze, as if he was embarrassed.

Maggie cocked her head. "Like what?"

"Well… first all I could find was stuff about therapists – people you go to with your problems, and they help you with them."

Maggie had never heard of such a thing. "What kind of problems? How do they help you?"

"Problems with your head," Bucky explained, and they both flashed fake smiles to the driver as he walked past. "They… I don't know, talk to you about them. Help make it better."

Maggie had observed that discussing her guilt and her memories with Bucky had helped, but the idea of going to a stranger like that was unsettling.

Bucky continued: "'course, we can't go to therapists, since we're on the run and all, but there's other ways of getting better – therapies and whatnot."

"Therapies?" Maggie had advanced knowledge about mechanics, engineering, cybernetics and many other sciences, but she had never even heard of methods to heal one's mind. She supposed HYDRA wouldn't have a lot of use for it.

"Yeah," Bucky replied. He seemed encouraged by her curiosity. "From what I can tell, there's lots of ways that people – ordinary people – have gotten rid of their nightmares, or learned to deal with bad shit that happened to them. Some of it's related to talking, but there's also some complicated scientific ways that I thought you might…" his metal arm whirred as he trailed off. "I thought… if it works for some people, then it might… for us…"

Maggie was captivated by the idea. She'd just accepted that her mind was a broken mess of horrific memories and guilt. The idea of improving it somehow, of easing the darkness swirling inside her, was fascinating. "You said you've done research?"

Bucky smiled – he could tell, by now, when her brain started really kicking into gear. "Mostly online, but I, uh… stole this last week." With a wince and a shrug, he pulled a book from inside his jacket.

Maggie read the title, and laughed.  _Unf*ck Yourself_. "Really?"

He shrugged. "Seemed appropriate. And from what I've read so far, it's pretty good."

Maggie settled into her seat, considering the term  _therapies._ Any time she'd heard the word before, it had always been HYDRA-speak for some kind of torture, or experimentation. But Bucky wouldn't have brought this up unless he thought it would help, and if he genuinely wanted to try it.

To face the darkest parts of herself and try to make them better? The thought was terrifying, but the idea that it might be possible? Healthy, even? Maggie could feel herself itching for knowledge, to collect all the available data about therapies and their success rates.

She'd spent a lifetime repressing and concealing her feelings from her handlers and herself, but she didn't see the point any more. Of course this often got overwhelming, and Bucky had had to ease her back from an anxious, self-loathing meltdown almost weekly.

Seeking empirical data and applying it to their situation was… tempting.

"May I?" she eventually asked, nodding at the book. Concealing a smile, Bucky handed it over and crossed his arms, signalling that he would keep watch while she read.

It was a good thing that Bucky was keeping an eye out, because Maggie didn't take her eyes off the book for the rest of the eight-hour bus trip. When she was done, she handed the book back to Bucky.

"Well?" he asked.

Maggie straightened her wig and lifted her chin. "I'm going to do some research."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I guess this is kind of a therapy fic? It won't be a huge focus, but I think it's definitely something that these two would take notice of (Bucky because this is the first chance he's had since 1945 to think about his head space, and Maggie because she's trying to understand the world through empirical research). There'll be a bit more elaboration later, but I just want to stress that a) I'm not trying to get you to buy any particular self-help book, and b) don't do this at home, I guess? Bucky & Maggie are doing their best with what they have, but if you aren't on the run from HYDRA then professional help is a GREAT option.
> 
> There will be a few Spanish translations in the coming chapters – apologies in advance for the inherent fallibility of Google Translate, I've done my best!
> 
> R.e. timelines, if I haven't specified the date, only the month, it means there's no exact line up to specific dates in the MCU, and the scene just happens somewhere in that month.
> 
> A note on Maggie's character: I feel like if there's one common trait with the Starks it's that despite their flaws, they're good people. They might not be good fathers, or bosses, or teammates, but at their heart they're good. At the end of the day they're going to be there helping to fight the Nazis or the aliens. So that's where I'm coming from for Maggie's character – when she leaves HYDRA, that inner goodness is what starts to emerge.
> 
> Also, if it isn't clear, when she's 'Meg' it's Bucky's POV.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many apologies for misspelling Colombia in the last chapter, thank you to AO3 user Izzie for pointing it out. I am a huge idiot. I'm trying to be as sensitive as possible when writing other countries and languages, and I do as much research as I can, but I thank you for pointing it out and bearing with me when I mess up!

March, 2014  
HYDRA Facility, Québec

"Mission is a go, initiate drop-in."

"My favourite way to show up to a party," Tony announced over the commlink. "Uninvited, and three drinks in."

"That better be a joke, Stark."

Tony grinned in his helmet as he broke through the cloud cover and dove toward the island HYDRA base. "Lighten up, Rogers. Kick back, have a few drinks."

Steve's long-suffering sigh was music to his ears.

"He's probably joking," piped up Rhodey.

"Sir, it appears the base  _is_  manned, and they have picked you up on their scanners." As soon as J.A.R.V.I.S. finished speaking, ground-to-air cannons on the island surface locked on to Tony's incoming heat signature.

"Ah, looks like this party's got bouncers," Tony announced to the rest of the group in the Quinjet. The cannons fired, sending him into careering slaloms through the air. He kept closing in on the base, though, trying to get close enough to get schematics for the rest of the team. "Wilson, how good are you at dodging?"

He heard the whine of Wilson's re-built wingpack powering up. "Not bad, I was Quarterback in high school."

"That's a lie," came Natasha's smooth voice.

"Alright, so I was a running back. Damn, woman, why do you even know that?"

"That's enough chatter," said Steve. "Tony, do you have the schematics?"

J.A.R.V.I.S. displayed what he had on Tony's HUD. "The base is pretty far underground, but I've got entrances and exits, transmitting to the Quinjet now. I'm taking out the cannons now, some help would be nice." Tony flew into the pine forest on the island's surface and fired his repulsors at the nearest cannon, veering to avoid the resulting explosion.

"Okay," said Steve, after taking a few moments to consult the schematics. "Wilson and Rhodes, go help Stark take out the cannons, then infiltrate the base through that entrance in the ravine. Stark, get that launchpad hatch open. Romanoff and I will land the Quinjet and follow you in."

"Aye aye, Captain," replied Tony, then went after the cannons with a vengeance, dodging through the pine forest and firing repulsor beams and missiles. So far there was no sign of a ground crew, but J.A.R.V.I.S. was picking up life-forms beneath the rock.

The S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA data dump hadn't yielded anything on the Winter Soldier, and there wasn't much at all about the Wyvern aside from fleeting mentions. Tony was still trying to work out how to decipher HYDRA's coded double-speak, but he'd worked out enough to know that his sister had been involved in a hell of a lot of espionage, infiltration and assassinations over the past twenty years.

He'd all but given up on the data dump when J.A.R.V.I.S. had pieced together some encrypted transmissions and reported back that there was a seventy five percent chance that the Wyvern had been based for a time at this facility in middle-of-nowhere Québec.

Fury – who, it turned out, was not as dead as was generally believed – had given Tony, Steve, Sam, and Rhodey the go ahead to take out the facility. Bruce was still avoiding hulk-outs whenever possible, Barton was suspiciously absent, and Thor was off-world. Natasha had shown up the day before their planned strike, and had obviously been keeping tabs on them because no one had to tell her the Wyvern's identity or what they'd been up to.

Before they got on the Quinjet, Natasha had cornered Tony. "Are you sure you want to do this?" She'd been simultaneously scary and supportive, a combination that he had only seen Natasha ever truly pull off.

"Sure," he'd responded. "Take down some bad guys, find out if the Wyvern lived in Canada, what's not to like? Also, uh… sorry, I guess, about all the times my sister tried to kill you."

She'd rolled her eyes. "Of all the things to apologise for, Tony." But then she'd gotten serious again, and put her hand on his shoulder. "She's not your responsibility, Tony. If you want to walk away, you can."

"I think you know I can't do that."

"Alright then." With another squeeze of his shoulder, Natasha had boarded the Quinjet and they'd left for the mission. He still wasn't sure if the spy liked him, despised him or just tried to manage him, but he'd take what he could get. As long as she didn't try to kill him with her ninja moves.

A cannon blast knocked Tony to the ground and he stood, targeting the cannon for a missile launch. But before he could fire, Rhodey rocketed overhead in his silver and grey armour and blew the cannon to kingdom come.

Tony waved. "Whoo, Iron Patriot saving the day!"

"C'mon, Tony, it's War Machine again, you know this."

Tony rocketed back into the sky and veered right to help Wilson take out a set of concealed gun turrets on a nearby cliff. "It's just so hard to keep up these days, next thing you know it'll be Flag-Bot. Patriot Machine?" He blew up the gun turrets, accidentally sending half the cliff tumbling into the ocean. "Oops."

He knew he normally wouldn't be talking  _quite_ this much, but the thought of what might be waiting in the base below was producing a veritable flood of inane word-vomit.

"Sir," interrupted J.A.R.V.I.S.. "I have accessed the facility's electronic systems. It appears there is a subroutine failsafe designed to detonate and destroy the base in the event of an incursion, which the inhabitants have just activated."

"Nah, this is your party now, J.A.R.V.I.S.."

"Of course, sir. I have reversed the subroutine and locked them out of their systems."

"This is why you're my favourite child. How are we looking on groundcrew?"

"I have access to their cameras, and it appears all HYDRA personnel intend to remain inside the base."

Tony landed at the launchpad on the south end of the island just as Rhodey took out the last cannon. Rhodey and Wilson spiralled away to the other base entrance. With the guns destroyed, the island was eerily quiet. There wasn't much to it, just a lump of granite and forest in the middle of the grey ocean.

"Clear for Quinjet landing," Tony reported. "And it looks like the good citizens of Canada have decided to play hide-and-seek."

"Copy," said Steve. "Wilson and Rhodes?"

"We're at the ravine, but I don't see…" there was a few seconds of silence. "Thanks, J.A.R.V.I.S.. Okay, J.A.R.V.I.S. is opening the hidden door now. And-" the sound of small-arms fire erupted over the comms. "We've got contact!"

"A hidden door," Tony complained, yanking open the metal hatch on the launchpad. "Why don't  _I_  ever get the hidden door?"

The Quinjet settled on the launchpad just as Tony took out the first wave of angry HYDRA agents. Cap and Widow ran down the gangway in their suits and met him by the hatch.

"Pensioners first," Tony said, stepping back and waving at the hatch with his glowing gauntlet. "I feel like it's illegal to break into a HYDRA base and not have that shield be the first thing they see."

Steve nodded at Tony and dropped in through the hatch, closely followed by Nat. They were immediately met with gunfire. Tony switched into body-heat targeting mode and dropped into the base with a  _clang._

 

* * *

 

The base was theirs within minutes. Their intel hadn't given them much, but it appeared the base wasn't at full functionality any more, staffed only by a skeleton crew of agents and technicians. They were well-organised, but they didn't have the forces or the resources to stand up to half the Avengers. Those that didn't die in the firefight crunched cyanide pills, save for one technician who turned out to be a petrified rookie who didn't know anything about anything. Wilson marched him back up to the Quinjet in cuffs, and informed Fury that they had a prisoner for him to pass along to the CIA.

It was a dark warren of a base, with twisting tunnels and rocky ceilings. J.A.R.V.I.S. had control of the electronic systems, so he was able to direct the team throughout the facility to flush out the remaining agents.

Tony soon found himself in what looked like the main lab, a rocky cavern with various machines hidden under sheets. Most of the agents had been defending this room.

The others filed in after him (minus Wilson, who stayed with the rookie on the Quinjet), peering at the devices.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.? What do we have?"

"It appears that much of the digital and hard-copy data in this facility was purged in early 2001," J.A.R.V.I.S. announced over the comms. "However, I have recovered an electronic file on the Wyvern Project, and on various missions managed from this facility."

"She was here?" Tony walked up to a computer bank and booted it up, though there was no point with J.A.R.V.I.S. already in the system.

"Yes, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied, in a softer tone.

Tony looked around, and imagined Maggie walking these floors, existing in this subterranean space. He remembered how she used to thunder around the house in New York, surprisingly loud for her small size. He squeezed his eyes shut.

J.A.R.V.I.S. continued: "Captain Rogers, I have found no sign of the Winter Soldier."

Steve walked up to the device in the middle of the room and yanked the sheet off it. In the resulting cloud of dust, Tony made out what looked like a chair with metal arms and powered-down computers wired up to it.

"What is this?" Steve asked.

J.A.R.V.I.S. answered: "According to a HYDRA file released in the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump, that is a Memory Suppression Machine, used on assets to ensure compliance."

Tony let out a shuddering breath. "J.A.R.V.I.S., c'mon. Give me the run down." He ignored the glances from the others – Rhodey had lifted his face plate and was giving him a concerned look. Steve was glaring at the Memory Suppression Machine. Natasha looked coolly disinterested, but that could mean anything.

"Very well, sir," began J.A.R.V.I.S. "The Wyvern Program began in the late eighties, the pet project of HYDRA operative Michael Peters, formerly Mikhail Petrov, who defected from the KGB in 1987. He saw the signs about the fall of the Soviet Union and pledged his loyalty to HYDRA. Director Pierce was impressed by his global outlook, and the Wyvern Program became one of the many heads of HYDRA.

"They monitored promising children from the world over, with a focus on high IQ, problem solving, and physical fitness, and kidnapped them with impunity. The project leaders experimented on the children, in an attempt to make them as loyal to HYDRA as the Winter Soldier-" Tony saw Steve flinch out of the corner of his eye "- while also fortifying their skeletons with Adamantium. It appears that all experiments ended in death or cognitive destruction, until Miss Stark.

"There is no data about how the Wyvern Project acquired Miss Stark, but with the fortification of a super-soldier serum synthesis the experiments were successful, leading to the creation of the cybernetic wings."

Tony didn't move. He couldn't. The others were staring at him.

"How long was she here, J.A.R.V.I.S."

"Tony-" started Natasha, but he flipped up his face-plate and shot her a glare. She shut her mouth.

"The Wyvern was housed in this facility for just over a decade, sir. Files date from 1991 to 2001."

Tony's chest was tight, but he breathed through it. He ignored the glances the others were shooting at him and each other. "What did they do to her?"

Rhodey spoke up this time: "Tony, you don't have to do this-"

He clenched his fist and turned on his friend. "No, Rhodey, she was  _five_ when she came here. I'm damn well going to find out what they did to her." He unclenched his fist. "You can leave if you want."

The War Machine suit whirred as Rhodey shifted his feet. His face was grim, and there was a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. He'd reviewed some of the data about the Wyvern's missions, and stared for a long time at the image of her in flight at the Triskelion. Tony wondered if he was having trouble imagining the Maggie he knew as that masked assassin. Tony wondered if he was thinking about that morning in the mansion's kitchenette, when Maggie had sat across from them in her stripey pyjamas with a glass of orange juice.

"Okay," Rhodey eventually sighed. "I'll stay." He shifted to stand beside Tony at the computer bank. J.A.R.V.I.S. uploaded files and video clips to the screens.

Tony looked up at Steve and Natasha. "Staying?"

They didn't look much happier than Rhodey, but they stayed.

J.A.R.V.I.S. showed them what he'd found, and it was somehow even worse than what Tony had been imagining. There were clinical notes about the Wyvern's enhancements, capabilities and training.  _Cognitive recalibration_.  _Identity destruction. Combat and weapons training._ J.A.R.V.I.S. highlighted a Progress Report that was sent to Pierce, which said that the Wyvern had been killing innocent people when she was six years old.

J.A.R.V.I.S.'s audience was pale and horrified – at first there was a low chorus of  _Jesus Christ_  and  _my god_ , but after the details kept getting worse and worse, there was nothing they could say.

There was a brief line that stated:  _Wyvern transferred to Red Room in 1994 for espionage and infiltration training._  Unbenownst to Tony, Steve and Natasha shared a glance. Natasha's face flickered for an instant, showing Steve her discomfort, but then she pieced her calm façade back together.

Tony was frozen, not taking his eyes off the screen as he processed the words. He felt like he was coming apart from the inside out, with every mention of a test or experiment performed on  _the Wyvern_ , his sister. It sounded like they took her memories away regularly, but that didn't make him feel any better. They took Maggie apart over and over, and put their own monster in her place.

He kept forgetting to breathe.

J.A.R.V.I.S. might normally have stopped providing data, might have suggested that he take a break, but the A.I. knew his creator all too well. Tony wouldn't look away until he'd heard it all, his own heart be damned.

There were videos. Not many, as they'd been specifically targeted in the 2001 purge, but some. The first cut straight to an exposed, bloody bone, encased in scarlet flesh. Rhodey made a sickened sound and turned around, but Natasha and Steve watched with Tony. They watched a hand in a latex glove paint a molten grey metal onto the bone.

The camera was focused on the procedure, but in the corner of the frame a thin arm in a metal restraint was visible. More metal was layered onto the bone, and the shaking hand clenched into a fist.

Tony's breath caught in his chest. "J.A.R.V.I.S., is there audio?"

"No," interjected Natasha before J.A.R.V.I.S. could reply. "You don't need that sound in your head, too."

Tony clenched his jaw and considered defying her, but he supposed she was right. He knew what he'd hear. Besides, from the glint in Natasha's eye, he suspected she would do something drastic like shoot the computers or him to stop him from listening.

The video dissolved into colourful pixels, and J.A.R.V.I.S. informed them that the rest of the file was corrupted. He followed it up with a full-body scan of the Wyvern dated from late 1996. The body was clearly a child, but that was where any normality ended. The scan showed metal on the bones of her spine, shoulders, the back of her ribcage, her hips, and down the backs of her legs. Two large metal wings arched out from hubs on the Wyvern's back, with a sturdy bat-like skeleton and lighter webbing. J.A.R.V.I.S. gave them a moment to process the scan in silence.

"Jesus," Rhodey said, once he'd turned back around. "She was  _ten_."

Tony stared at the dark shadow of Maggie's silhouette, trying to make it out past the brighter lines of metal. The measurements on the scan showed that she was tall for her age, then, but she looked impossibly small to him. He looked at the shadowy lines of her skull, and wondered what she'd been thinking when they scanned her. Did she even remember a time when she hadn't had metal on her bones?

Another video showed a large room with a thin mat on the floor – "That room's in this facility," Steve said, his voice troubled. "I just cleared it."

On screen, the winged Wyvern fought ten armed men. She wore a black and grey combat suit, a cowl that covered her head and face, and glowing red goggles. She looked tall enough to be an adult on this footage, but the date stamp showed that she would only have been thirteen. It looked like a training session, as no one was killed, but the force and precision the Wyvern displayed was frightening. She plowed through the men, knocking them aside with her wings and landing devastating punches to their torsos. Tony saw the glint of a blade a few times before he realised there were retractable spurs emerging from her heels. When the last man was thrown bodily against the wall the Wyvern instantly stilled, hands loose by her sides and wings poised. The video cut out.

"There is no data on Michael Peters after 2001," J.A.R.V.I.S. continued. "It is likely he defected or was killed. That signified the end of the Wyvern Project, and it appears they stopped taking such detailed notes on the Wyvern. The Wyvern was posted to ' _take on a more comprehensive role in achieving HYDRA's goals'_."

Tony's eyes flicked over the various files displayed on the computer screens. The others stayed silent, waiting on him. "J.A.R.V.I.S., are there any-" his traitorous voice broke slightly, and he clenched his jaw. Once he'd gotten control of himself, he continued. "Are there any images of her face?"

There were none that he could see. He'd seen Maggie's spine and the scans of her bones, and he'd seen her break a man's ribs, but he hadn't seen her face.

"I have found an early note in a file that instructs Wyvern Project handlers to not record or save any images of the Wyvern's face," J.A.R.V.I.S. said in a soft tone. "However, I have recovered this still from a corrupted video that failed to be erased."

The other files on the screens were wiped away, replaced by an image of the Wyvern sitting in the Memory Suppression Machine. She wore the same combat suit as before but the cowl, goggles and wings had been removed. The metal arms of the machine were clamped to her face, and even though the still was pixelated, Tony could see that she was screaming.

Finally, he looked away. He could feel the muscles in his face vibrating, they were so tightly clenched. His vision was blurring. She'd been screaming, and she was older in the image, probably about twelve, but it was  _Maggie._ Her eyes, her face, her hair. Her Stark brow and chin, and her mom's nose.

Tony lifted his arm and fired a rocket at the Memory Suppression Machine. The resulting explosion was loud and bright, but the others didn't protest. Steve looked relieved.

Tony looked back at the image of his screaming sister on the screen and took a long, slow breath through his nose. "J.A.R.V.I.S., reboot that failsafe."

"Sir, that will detonate the entire island-"

"I know. Do it." His hands were shaking, but the suit kept him steady. He expected the others to protest, but it seemed they were all on the same page.

"And the files, sir?"

Tony couldn't look away from Maggie's pixelated, screaming face. There was a rubber bit in her mouth. Natasha was right – he was going to have these images in his head for the rest of his life. He could already feel the fixation starting, the drive that would see him through to wherever his sister was, no matter the consequences. And if he came across any of the HYDRA bastards who'd hurt her along the way? Well, he didn't think his teammates would stop him.

"Lock-box procedure," he eventually said. It was a procedure he'd developed for his most sensitive inventions and data, a digital safe buried so damn deep that no one would ever find it. "Code it so it opens only for Maggie's biometric signature."

"Understood, sir. You have five minutes to evacuate the facility."

That kicked Steve into action. "Alright, let's move it out. Sam, you copy?"

"I copy." Wilson's voice was low and disturbed. He'd caught J.A.R.V.I.S.'s audio show-and-tell, then.

As the four of them strode out of the lab and up to the surface, Natasha fell into step with the Iron Man suit.

"You think she'll want to see those?" she murmured.

"I don't know," Tony said, flipping his face-plate down. "But what happens to those files shouldn't be up to me."

"Did you get what you came for, Tony?" They'd climbed back up out of the hatch, into the frigid ocean air.

"Not yet," He replied, and fired up his repulsors. "Remember, four minutes and twenty seconds to detonation. Get clear."

He and the Quinjet were miles away when the island went up in a fiery roar. Tony flipped onto his back to watch the flickering glow of an island-wide explosion, and thought about the dark, winding tunnels and cold metal labs that would now lie forever at the bottom of the ocean. Wherever Maggie was now, he hoped she was somewhere warmer, brighter. He hoped there was even a fragment of herself left to salvage. Either way, he'd find her.

 

* * *

 

March, 2014  
Iquitos, Peru

Maggie leaned further into the shadow of the bus stop to shield her gaze from the sun. It was a bright, warm day, the air sticky with humidity. She'd gotten a lift into Iquitos on a cargo boat, dressed as a man. No one had looked twice at her bound chest, the cap on her head, or the duffle bag with her wings. She'd been lying low in the city since then, staying out of public areas as much as possible.

She and Bucky had split up a week ago, concerned that a tail had caught on to their scent. It had turned out to be nothing, but they followed through with the agreed upon contingency plan: no contact for a week and then rendezvousing in a location they'd agreed on earlier.

They had chosen Iquitos because it was inaccessible by road, but it wasn't unusual to see white faces there.

The week of no contact was up, so Maggie watched the bustling plaza from her seat at the bus stop, eyes peeled for Bucky or for anything suspicious. She wore shorts and a t-shirt, for the weather, and sunglasses and a hat to conceal her face.

It had been an odd week without Bucky. She was perfectly capable of surviving and evading notice on her own, but she'd realised how much she relied on him to get out of her own head, to have any kind of social contact. Normally they didn't engage with strangers, so she'd felt very quiet and very alone.

And then, of course, one of her various digital alert systems had pinged the destruction of an island in Canada. The program had deemed it suspicious because of the sheer scale of destruction, and because Iron Man had been sighted not far from the location. Her program hadn't been the only one to notice, and news media began to speculate wildly. The Avengers responded by releasing a statement explaining that there had been a HYDRA base on the island.

That was when Maggie put together her memories of dark forests, granite cliffs and soaring over the surface of a grey ocean. She didn't know if she'd ever been told exactly where she was being kept, but the news footage of the smoking ruin in the ocean looked too familiar for it to be a coincidence.

Maggie noticed the approaching man when he was ten feet away, and relaxed. If it was anyone other than Bucky, she'd have noticed him much sooner. Sure enough, when he sat next to her at the bus stop she could hear the faint whirring of his metal arm. She ducked her head and smiled.

"Fancy seeing you here," he muttered, kicking one leg up over his knee. His clothes were light, but still long enough to conceal his arm. He wore bike gloves and sunglasses.

"Small world," Maggie agreed. "Any trouble?"

"None, that tail turned out to be nothing. Getting here was goddamn difficult, though."

"Oh? I had a lovely boat ride."

"Boats," Bucky scoffed, adjusting his sunglasses as he looked out at the plaza. "I hiked through the rainforest." Before she could ask him why he'd thought travelling through the Amazon jungle on his own was a good idea, he dropped his voice further. "Saw the news about the Québec facility. I guess they really are going after HYDRA."

Maggie's smile faded. "Not here. There's a safehouse two clicks west: red door, blue curtains."

"Yes, ma'am." He brushed against her knee as he stood up, then disappeared. Moments later Maggie flagged down a bus – one couldn't just sit at a bus stop for thirty minutes and not get on a bus – and rode away.

 

Bucky was already in the safehouse when she got there, inspecting the one-bedroom flat and the view from the only window. It had a good view of the street without being exposed, and she'd noticed that you could just see the Amazon river to the east.

"I think I was based in that Québec facility," Maggie said by way of second greeting, once the door was shut behind her. She touched her toe against the duffle bag with her wings on the way past, for reassurance.

Bucky stepped away from the window and put his hands on his hips. "You remember?"

"I remember an island, and the news footage confirmed it. My memories are…" she shook her head. "I must have been there for years. This is the first we've heard about the Avengers taking down a HYDRA base, and it just happens to be that one?" Now that she was vocalising it, she realised how anxious she was about this. She took deep, calming breaths. "I was made in that base. I don't know if there'd still be information about me there, but if there is…"

Bucky was nodding, his eyes serious. "Your words?"

"I don't know."

There were a few moments of silence.

Eventually, Maggie said: "Iron Man was there."

"So he might know you're alive." Bucky's voice was calm. "Is that okay?"

"If he knows…" she swallowed. "If he knows what they did to me, what  _I've done_ , what I am…" She shook her head. "It would have been easier if I stayed dead."

Bucky opened his mouth, but she held up a hand, already knowing what he was going to say. In the past month they'd both read up extensively on psychological treatments, particularly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: building coping methods and healthier thought patterns. "I know, I know. I don't…  _I_ don't think it would be better if I was dead, I think it would be better for him. To keep him safe."

Bucky sighed and sat on the bed, pulling off his gloves. "What do you think he'd do if he found out you were alive?"

Maggie ran a hand through her hair and leaned against the wall. She wanted to say that Tony would try to find her. She also wanted to say that he wouldn't try. But the truth was…

"I don't know," she replied. "The Tony from twenty years ago would have wanted to see me, though he wouldn't have been able to handle it. I have no idea about the man he is now."

"Do you want to see him?"

Maggie gave Bucky a sharp glance. "You know why I can't do that."

He shrugged. "Doesn't stop you wanting things."

She shook her head, and took him in: she could still see the Soldier in him, in the rigid way he held himself and his ever-alert gaze, but she was starting to see more of  _Bucky_ as well.

Maggie sighed. "Yeah," she admitted. "I do want that."

She was endlessly curious about her brother, about the things he'd done with his life. She remembered reading news headlines about him, as the Wyvern. She remembered thinking that she was malfunctioning.

Re-reading the headlines now provoked similar feelings of dread and hope. From what she'd seen, her brother had been through hell and back: losing his family, then the kidnapping in Afghanistan, followed by enemies and aliens and hardship. She had to admit he bore it with style, at least in the public eye. She'd read up on Pepper Potts as well – she seemed wonderful.

Bucky seemed content to let her process her thoughts; he leaned against the wall on the other side of the bed and closed his eyes.

Eventually, she pulled herself out of her thoughts and moved into the kitchen. Whether the Avengers had found information about her or not, it would change nothing. She and Bucky were hiding and would continue to do so.

"Here," she said to Bucky, and handed him a glass of juice when he opened his eyes. Juice was one of the first non-water beverages she had tried after the battle of the Helicarriers (not that she'd tried a lot). She liked the sweet taste. "I imagine it got pretty hot in the jungle," she added, with a smirk.

"Thank you," he replied. She took a seat on the tatty couch on the other side of the room.

Bucky was working his jaw, a tell she knew meant he was struggling to say something. She waited.

Finally: "I missed you."

She glanced up from her juice, eyes wide. She hadn't expected that.

"I'm trying your thing," he explained, shrugging.

Her 'thing' was honesty – early on in their research into therapies, Maggie had told Bucky she wanted to be as honest as she possibly could, while on the run. Her whole life so far had been built on lies and repression and she was afraid that if she tried to pretend, to others or to herself, that she'd never work out who she truly was. She'd learned, through extensive reading, that simply discarding her feelings wouldn't work – it  _hadn't_ worked while she was the Wyvern.

She didn't actually get many occasions to lie, except when she had to maintain a cover. But she was determined not to hide from the truth, when it came to herself – that was often a frightening and overwhelming exercise, but it was worth it.

 _Bucky had missed her._ She smiled, and considered her own feelings. She remembered missing people, before – she missed her father when he was away, and she remembered missing Tony, Jarvis and Dum-E on the car ride away from the mansion. She missed them all now, in an aching, distant way, in the way people missed someone they would never see again.

She had certainly felt Bucky's absence – she'd felt out of sorts, alone and a little bit less like a person. She'd wanted to speak to him, to see him. She'd wanted his familiar presence by her side. She'd wanted to hear him tell a story from before HYDRA, or bump his shoulder into hers.

Maggie met Bucky's gaze. She wasn't sure how long she'd been silent, thinking, but Bucky never seemed to mind when she needed a minute or two to process. "I missed you too," she replied, with a smile.

He smiled back.

After a few minutes of recounting their respective journeys to Iquitos and postulating the likelihood of anyone knowing they were in South America, Bucky cleared his throat.

"That Québec base reminded me of something – I don't think my handlers usually told me where I was, but I remembered the location of this one base in Belarus."

Maggie sat up and put down her glass of juice. "You did?"

"Yeah," he clenched his jaw. "I remember exactly where."

"Do you think it's still operational?"

"I don't remember  _when_  I was there, so I don't know. But it's… if there's any chance that HYDRA agents are seeking shelter there…"

Maggie felt her own gaze harden. "You want to do something about it." She got up and pulled her latest laptop out of the duffle bag. "How do you want to do this? I could try to get a direct line of communication to Captain Rogers, if that's what you want…?"

Bucky shook his head. "No, this can't be traced back to us. I was thinking maybe… if there was a way of leaking the location?"

She took her hands off the laptop for a moment, considering. Finally, a wicked smile crossed her face. "I'll do you one better."

 

* * *

 

In the end, no one did trace the discovery of the Belarus base back to Maggie and Bucky. In the dead of night, every single communication device in the base flared into life, transmitting the same message to intelligence and law enforcement agencies throughout Europe:  _Hail HYDRA._

The base, which turned out to be sheltering a prominent HYDRA death squad, was overrun by the agencies within hours. When the Avengers showed up, there was nothing left to do but to help analyse data. They did think it was a little odd that the base had announced its location like that, but they supposed the inhabitants had gotten tired of the constant hiding. There was no one left to ask, anyway – they'd all bitten into their cyanide pills.  _Well,_ sighed the lead investigator on the scene, when he walked the Avengers back to their Quinjet.  _They're crazy neo-nazis, what do you expect?_

Over seven thousand miles away, Bucky bought Maggie her first ever beer. They clinked their bottles together in the small safehouse, grinning at each other as live media coverage of the base takedown played in the background.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll have more of Bucky and Maggie's Journey to Become People™ next! Comment, kudos and subscribe, my lovelies :)


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update, by request! Next chapter will be on Monday (US time) as usual.
> 
> Most of this monster chapter is pure fluff, so enjoy. You earned it, guys.

March, 2014  
Iquitos, Peru

"Y'know," Bucky said from his post by the window. "I don't actually know that much about you."

Maggie looked up from where she'd been covertly siphoning HYDRA funds. She blinked. "You know everything about me."

He cocked his head. "No, I mean… I know all the stuff you've told me from when you were a kid, and I know about you as the Wyvern, but what about now?"

"Now?"

"Things you like. Things you don't. Dumb stuff."

Maggie thought about this. She realised that though she and Bucky had tied their fates together, she still didn't really know him either. She had data about him as Bucky Barnes and data about him as the Winter Soldier, but this new person was a mystery.

She frowned. The concept of  _knowing_ someone was strange. "How do we find out?"

Bucky kicked his feet up on the bed – that was a habit she knew he was fond of, making himself at home wherever he was. It was as if he'd endured so much discomfort and pain under HYDRA that he was determined to always be comfortable. Or perhaps that was the way he'd always been. "Well, we ask. I'll start – what's your favorite food?"

Maggie's nose wrinkled. "How will that help you to know me?"

He shrugged. "I guess I used to do this with the Commandos, back in the day. There wasn't a lot of food to be had on the front, so we used to describe these delicious meals we were going to have at the end of the war. Drove Dugan nuts, said it only made him hungrier, but it was fun. I still remember how much Dernier loved olives."

"What meals did you say you were going to eat?"

His lips quirked. "Nah, I asked you first."

She pursed her lips and thought about it. She and Bucky had been living off canned food, protein bars and dry goods since they'd escaped HYDRA. She'd noticed herself developing preferences; tomato soup over pumpkin, and so on, but she couldn't say if she had a  _favorite._ Bucky had bought her that beer, and it had been nice, but she hadn't  _loved_ it. She tried to remember her favourite food as a child, but it was too hazy. She sighed. "I don't know."

Bucky didn't push her – he seemed to see her struggling. Instead, he frowned and murmured: "I suppose we haven't really been living it up."

"What was your favorite invented meal?" Maggie asked, to cut through the tension.

He rolled his eyes. "Well it always involved steak, I remember that much. Tenderloin, porterhouse… oh, and I used to tell Falsworth that I'd turn him over to the Nazis in exchange for a piece of fruit – usually an apple." He closed his eyes and smiled. "Anything from home, though, really. Steve and I used to buy hotdogs and popcorn when we could afford it. Sometimes even when we couldn't."

She liked the way the lines in his face softened when he talked about a good memory. When Bucky opened his eyes, he looked at her.

"You ever had any of that?"  
Maggie shook her head. She knew what the foods he described  _looked_ like, but she couldn't even imagine the taste of them.

His mouth dropped open. "Well that ain't right. We've gotta start getting more stuff to eat, we've gotta-"

"Alright," she laughed, holding up her hands. "We'll do that. Ask another question."

But Bucky was still stuck on the food thing. "Really, never? What do you remember eating when you were a kid?"

She thought about it, fighting the ache behind her eyes that never failed to spring up when she forced herself to search for a memory. "I think… ice cream? With Tony? I don't really remember the taste, though, I just remember… he got distracted while talking about something, and his ice cream melted down his hand." She smiled, always glad to have another memory returned to her.

Bucky's horror softened a little. "Still, we've got to try more foods. I can't believe I didn't think of that. Food is… food is great. You'll love it."

"I'm sure I will," she replied, bemused. "And you had better make good on all those meals you promised to eat when the war was over."

That made him smile. "Alright, your turn to ask a question."

She frowned. "I don't know any questions."  
"You just gotta make something up. Is there anything you're curious about?" He raised his eyebrows at her.

She leaned back in her seat at the table, eyeing Bucky. If he was uncomfortable under her stare he didn't show it, still leaning against the wall with his feet on the bed.

"Have you read books?" she eventually asked, then clarified: "not just ones about psychology. Story books."

Bucky's mouth dropped open again. "Have I…  _yeah_ , yeah I've read story books." His brow furrowed. "Meg, I'm sorry, I didn't realise how much stuff you've missed out on."

She thought she might have gotten defensive if he'd said that a few weeks ago, but she'd made that promise to be honest to herself. He was right – if one was looking for normal experiences and behaviours, then Maggie's life ended at five years old. She'd done certain things for infiltration missions, such as sipping an alcoholic beverage or pretending to read a newspaper, but she had only ever been thinking about the mission. She'd only ever complied.

Bucky took his feet off the bed and leaned forward. "I'm sorry, Meg. We can… we can do things. We've been running, and we're still running, but that doesn't mean we have to live like we did under HYDRA. Let's do things you've never tried before, things I haven't done in seventy years." His eyes were serious, and his face was alight with energy.

"Like what?"

"Like…" he looked around the room, as if searching for answers. "Like reading books that aren't just about fixing our heads. Trying foods. Going outside and looking at stuff, anything you want to do." He ran a hand over his jaw, agitated at himself for not having thought about this sooner.

Maggie considered it. Her research into psychology  _had_ said that engaging with the world and participating in hobbies was important to improving mental health. At the time she'd set that data aside, like the data about seeing therapists, because she hadn't thought it possible. She didn't  _have_ hobbies. She  _couldn't_ engage with the world. But Bucky seemed to think it was possible. The idea was simultaneously terrifying and thrilling.

"Alright," she decided. "But first you have to tell me what your favorite story book is."

That seemed to ease his agitation. "Uh… I always told my English teacher that I liked the Shakespeare plays, but that wasn't one hundred percent true. I remember reading this one book with Steve when we were kids, his mom bought it new for his birthday.  _The Hobbit_. S'got… dwarves, and a dragon, and this little guy." He seemed pleased with himself for remembering.

"Would I like it?"

Bucky cocked his head. "Don't know. Worth finding out, though." He got to his feet and pulled on his bike gloves. "C'mon."

She blinked. "Where?" They didn't need any supplies, and they weren't planning to leave this safe house or Iquitos for a while. They'd been slowing down their travel before the separation, and didn't need to jump from city to city quite so quickly any more.

"Outside for a walk," he said. "We're going to do something. Like people." He shrugged.

Maggie got to her feet slowly. "Are you sure?"

He nodded. "We're doing alright, Meg, no one knows where we are and we're working on getting our heads right. But I remember walking around the city because I could, I remember doing things because they were  _fun_ , and not just necessary. And neither of us have had that in a long time. Do you trust me?"

"Of course," she replied. The idea of just walking out the door without a plan was alien to her, but it was clear that Bucky remembered more about being a person than she did. "For the mission?" she asked, with a smirk.

"For the mission," he replied, and opened the door.

 

* * *

 

They only walked a few blocks before they came across a bustling market with vibrant stalls, shouting children, and music drifting through the air. Maggie looked at Bucky in alarm, but he just shook his head at her, smiling, and they strolled into the thick of it. Neither of them were going to lose track of their surroundings, and they both had all the training they needed to spot any sign of a tail.

Keeping close by Bucky's side, Maggie stared at the spectacle around her. People streamed up and down the street, hopping from stall to stall and talking over one another. It was all so  _colourful_. Scarlet canvases stretched over each stall to protect the wares from the sun, and the locals didn't shy away from wearing bright colours. As Maggie stared they passed a stand bursting with fruit, another with rows of green glass bottles, and another with stone and wood trinkets. Bucky seemed just as in awe of the market as she was – he nudged her arm, and pointed at a woman selling various animal skulls on a plastic table. As they watched, an older gentleman haggled over the price of a crocodile skull with the leather still on.

"I think markets are a bit different than I'm used to," Bucky murmured, before they kept moving down the street.

They ducked under several low-hanging ropes draped with beaded necklaces and wooden masks. Maggie stared unabashedly. She'd never been somewhere just for the wonder of it, and she found she didn't mind the feeling.

A wafting smell of cooking meat hit her nostrils, and her stomach growled. Bucky heard it, even over the babbling crowd.

"Time to start trying new foods?" he asked, smirking. She rolled her eyes.

They squeezed through the crowd toward the food stalls, and Maggie immediately deferred to Bucky's judgement. She'd never been presented with so many options before. Each vendor seemed to have something different: vats filled with stews, barbecuing fish, skewers of meat, tables full of bread and cured meats. The smells clashed in the air, a tantalising and strange aroma. Bucky seemed a little lost, too – there were certainly no hot dogs here – but eventually picked a stall and strode toward it. They walked away with two bowls of  _tacacho_ , which seemed to be a local delicacy but which neither Bucky or Maggie knew the ingredients of.

Bucky watched Maggie out of the corner of his eye as she ate the chorizo-and-vegetable-mash combination, and found himself chuckling at the sheer amazement on her face.

"It's like the beans!" she exclaimed through a mouthful of food. "Chilli!"

He laughed again and continued eating his share, as they explored the market. There were clothes, food, art and hundreds of things that neither of them had seen before. As they walked, they continued their back-and-forth questions.

"Favorite… colour?" asked Bucky, now chewing on a pork skewer. His eyes flickered around, scanning the crowd and the exits, then went back to Maggie.

She hadn't thought about that before, so she looked to a nearby art stall for inspiration. They had very colourful, intricate artworks here. She cocked her head.

"Red," she decided.

"I was going to accuse you of making that up on the spot," Bucky said, "But I think you're allowed to do that."

She stopped at a stall filled with flower arrangements, and blinked at the vibrance of the colours. "Do you know any jokes?" she asked.

Bucky adjusted his cap. "Uh, maybe. Why?"

"It's my turn for a question," she scolded, and bumped her shoulder against his to get them walking again.

He ducked his head, smiling. "Alright… no, I don't think I remember any. I know the Howlies told some pretty, uh, colorful jokes in the war, but I don't remember them. Sorry."

"That's alright. I remembered a joke the other day. I remember telling it to everyone in the mansion, because I thought it was hilarious. I told it to Tony four times and then he locked me out of the workshop."

"Alright," Bucky said. "Let's have it."

Maggie cleared her throat. She hadn't told a joke in over twenty years, she wanted to make sure she did it right. She made sure she remembered the exact wording before she opened her mouth. "Why did the elephant paint his toenails red?"

He frowned. "Uh… no idea."

"So he could hide in the cherry tree," she explained seriously.

Bucky's frown deepened. "Alright…" She could see him trying to muster up some kind of polite response to her joke.

Eventually, she asked: "have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?"

"No…?"

"Works, doesn't it?"

Bucky tipped his head back and groaned, even as he laughed.

Maggie grinned from ear to ear. "See, that's the reaction I remember getting!"

They kept exploring the market, shooting questions back and forth, and agreed to keep trying new foods. As they came to the busiest part of the marketplace, however, Maggie fell silent mid-sentence.

"Meg?" Bucky rapidly scanned the crowd around them, his eyes flicking to vantage positions and choke points, but he couldn't see anything amiss. Then he followed her gaze, and sighed when he realised what had silenced her.

It was one of the bands performing at the market: they stood on a slightly raised stage, performing to the milling crowd. The band had three men playing piano, drums and guitar, and a woman singing.

Maggie was transfixed. The song was smooth and velvety, and the chords flowed through the air like some kind of magic. The singer was a large woman with a cloud of jet-black hair, and she crooned the Spanish lyrics with absorbing passion, her eyes closed and her fists clenched. Her voice rang like a bell. Maggie had never seen – or heard – anything like it. She found herself walking closer, almost without thought, straining to catch every note. Before she knew it she was at the base of the stage, staring at the singer as she belted out the last few notes.

Bucky noticed that Maggie looked overwhelmed, her eyes bright and her face flushed.

"Are you alright?" he murmured, when the song ended.

"I just… didn't know… that it could  _be_ like this." She turned to face him, shaking her head.

"What?"

"Being a  _person_ ," she said, gesturing at him and the market around them. "Knowing that there are people who can do  _that-_ " she nodded at the singer, who had begun singing a more upbeat song. "And being here, to eat things and just experience it all, it's… it's wonderful." She shook her head again. "Thank you for this."

Bucky was watching her, with a slight smile on his face. He was giving her a look she'd only seen a few times before, like he was seeing her for the first time.

She squinted. "What? I've never done anything like this before."

"Surely you listened to music before?"

"Yes, on missions. But I wasn't… well, the music wasn't why I was there. And I never listened, I don't think I knew how to listen to music. So maybe the last time was from before HYDRA, but that was mostly covering my ears while Tony blasted his rock music."

Bucky cocked his head. "Rock?"

"Rock and roll," she elaborated. "I remember the names – Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, that sort of thing. Tony loved them."

He was still looking at her with a quizzical face, like the one he made when she started talking about advanced programming or aerodynamic theories. "Well," she said. " _I_ am going to show  _you_ rock and roll."

They agreed to buy some ingredients for a stew that Bucky thought he remembered how to make, and then head back to the safehouse. Before they left the main plaza, however, Maggie sensed someone watching her. She shadowed her face and glanced around surreptitiously, and furrowed her brow when she spotted her observer: a little girl, no older than eight, in a white shirt with a bright red skirt. The girl's wide brown eyes were fixed on Maggie.

Maggie frowned – she knew better than most the danger a child could pose. The girl seemed to take her frown as an invitation, and marched right up to her.

Bucky, sensing Maggie's discomfort, turned around just as the little girl came to a halt at their feet.

" _Eres muy bonita_ ," [" _You're very pretty,_ "] announced the girl, her head tilted back to look into Maggie's face.

Maggie could see from the girl's bearing and expression that this was not a trained assassin. This only made her tense further – she knew how to deal with assassins, but when it came to innocent children she was clueless.

The silence streched out, while Maggie and the girl stared at each other. She could sense Bucky watching her with amusement.

Finally, Maggie bit out: " _¿Dónde están tus… padres?_ " [" _Where are your… parents?_ "] This was her first real interaction with a child since she had been one, and she had no idea what to do.

" _Por ahí_." [" _Over there._ "] The girl gestured behind her, without taking her eyes off Maggie's face.

Bucky finally took pity on her. He squatted down, adjusting his cap so he could meet the little girl's eyes.  _"_ _¿Cuál es tu nombre?_ " [" _What's your name?_ "]

The girl looked away from Maggie's face. "Mayra."

" _Soy Bucky,_ " [" _I'm_   _Bucky_ ,"] he said, gesturing at himself, then nodded up at Maggie. " _Y esta es Meg._ " [" _A_ _nd this is Meg._ "] Bucky smiled.

Maggie stared at him as he interacted with the child – he clearly knew how to do this. There were still hints of the Soldier in the line of his shoulders and his constant wariness, but the way he smiled at the girl and made his voice softer, non-threatening… that was Bucky.

" _¿Cuantos años tienes?_ " [" _How old are you?_ "] he asked, and then gestured to himself again. " _Tengo noventa y siete años_." [" _I_ _'m ninety seven years old._ "]

Mayra wrinkled her nose. " _No los tienes_!" [" _No you're not!_ "]

" _Los tengo_ ," [" _I am,_ "] Bucky confirmed, with the solemn gaze of one imparting a great secret. "Meg,  _cuentale_." ["Meg _, tell her._ "]

Maggie sighed, and knelt beside him. As she knelt, she realized that Bucky's birthday must have passed, for him to be ninety seven now, and not ninety six. She recalled the display from the museum: March 10, 1917. They had been separated on his birthday – he was probably alone in the Amazon. Maggie didn't have a lot of data about birthdays, but she was aware that they involved celebration and presents. He hadn't had any of those.

As if sensing her thoughts, Bucky nudged her arm and shot her a soft smile. His gaze said humor the kid, so she did.

" _El tiene razón_ ," [" _He's right._ "] she told Mayra. " _Él es un hombre muy viejo_." [" _He is a very old man_."]

Bucky snorted, and Mayra's face creased in thought.

" _¿Eres muy viejo?_ " [" _Are you very old?_ "] she asked Maggie, and then her face brightened. " _¿Tienes cien años? Mi abuela tiene cien años, pero ella no es bonita_." [" _Are you one hundred? My grandma is one hundred years old, but she isn't pretty._ "]

Bucky started laughing in earnest now, his eyes crinkling. Before Maggie could set the record straight, Mayra's parents called to her.

" _¡Adiós, ancianos!_ " [" _Goodbye, elders!_ "] Mayra called, and rushed off.

" _¡Adiós,_ Mayra _!_ " [" _Goodbye,_ Mayra!"] Bucky called, and he and Maggie got to their feet.

Maggie frowned. "We missed your birthday."

"It's alright, I've apparently had a lot of them." The interaction with the child had greatly improved his already good mood.

Maggie shook her head. "But most of them were with HYDRA. What did you use to do for your birthdays?"

He thought about it. "At home I'd get a few presents, maybe go out to Coney Island or the pictures with Steve. In the war I got a bottle of scotch and a pack of smokes from the Commandos, and Steve gave me…" he smiled. "He gave me a sketch of my sisters."

Maggie felt wretched. She hadn't even  _thought_ about it. "What would you like for this one?"

He smiled at her again. "Today. Today has been pretty good."

She smiled at that. He had been right, getting them to try something because it was fun, instead of necessary. She could feel her many demons lurking, waiting for her to drop her guard or fall asleep. She knew she'd still have nightmares that night. Bucky would, too. But that didn't make today, with its market and food and singing, any less enjoyable.

 

* * *

 

Of course, Maggie couldn't rest until she'd procured Bucky a proper belated birthday gift.

The next day she came back from a solo supply run with a bottle of scotch, a pack of cigarettes, and some stationery for his notebook. She presented it to him in the plastic bag from the grocery store, and beamed when he thanked her.

Then she revealed the two porterhouse steaks she had purchased, and they cooked them poorly in the safehouse's tiny kitchen. Bucky kept giving her bad cooking advice, so Maggie had to consult the internet. By the time she'd figured it out the steaks were slightly overcooked, but Bucky proclaimed that it was his best meal in eighty years. He'd thrown out the cigarettes, but they shared the scotch during their meal.

Maggie slid the last part of his present across the table: a copy of  _The Hobbit_ (or rather,  _El Hobbit_ ) which she'd spotted by chance at a book vendor on the road back.

Bucky went still at the sight of it, his eyes fixed to the cover. "Shit," he said eventually, and looked up with bright eyes. "You're good at presents, Meg, y'know that?"

She hadn't been sure about it, so she let out an imperceptible sigh of relief.

"Thank you," he said. He looked… touched. "You should read it first, though."

She shook her head. "It's your present, you read it first. By the way, did you know there are more books by the same author? I checked the dates, they were published after the war."

Bucky's eyes shone. "There are  _more_?"

 

* * *

 

April, 2014

Ocean spray on her face, the cold tarmac of the launchpad under her bare feet. Confused, she was so confused. She'd been brought here, she was sleeping – or, she was still sleeping…

 _Go on, you need to go_. The man with huge round glasses, like insect eyes. He was small and frightened. She remembered his hand on the back of her head while he tore her apart. No, while he made her strong–

 _Go… where?_ Her child voice was flat – she knew only the mission.

_Away from here! Fly away, get away from them._

But I did, she wanted to say. But her jaw was wired shut, frozen. Had she gotten away?

_What's my mission?_

The man sighed. He  _saw_ her, saw the girl inside the monster. He opened his mouth and said:  _To be_ free.

The ocean roared, climbing up the cliff face to clutch at the Wyvern's feet. She screamed, but the man with the insect glasses wasn't watching her any more. She watched the hole open up in the back of his head, and the spray of blood that gleamed like mist. The ocean pulled her down, over the cliff and into the depths, away from the man who'd given her a mission she hadn't understood or obeyed.

Faces loomed in the dark water – two crying, trembling women, side-by-side in a small room.  _Choose one_. She chose neither. They both died. Lightning like fire through her body. A man and a woman the next time – they died, too.  _Choose. Choose. Choose._ She chose, one after the other, lifting the gun and pulling the trigger. Her hands were so  _small._

The faces pressed against her: pale, drowned creatures hungry for her flesh. The Wyvern kicked, but she couldn't get away. She tried to lift her wings, to fly out of the ocean, but they wouldn't move.

 _Verre_. [ _Glass._ ]

No, not that-

 _Transmission. Affamé._ [ _Transmission. Starving._ ]

Not again, she couldn't stand it-

 _Sept, veiux-_ [ _Seven, old_ ]

"No-"

 _Sécurité._ [ _Safety_ _._ ]

"Stop!"

 _Trois, tunnel_ \- [ _Three, tunnel_ ]

There was a warm hand on her mouth, and the Wyvern opened her eyes to the glint of metal and a scarlet star. She screamed and lashed out, throwing a punch into her attacker's chest and following up with a sweep of her heel spur – the blade missed, but her attacker backed off. She cut herself out of her constraints – bed sheets? – and threw herself to the hard floor, rolling toward the nearest exit. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and her throat was raw from screaming.  _The words, the faces, the… the mission_.

"Meg, wait!"

The Wyvern froze, already half in the next room – a kitchen? She felt compelled to listen to the voice, but her instincts still screamed  _no_ and  _run._ Chest heaving, she seized a knife from the drying rack and whirled around, arms up.

The man in the room she'd escaped hadn't chased her. He stayed against the far wall with his hands raised – one flesh, one metal – and searched her face.

Her mind whirled. She knew him, that arm, it…

"Soldier?" she croaked, not lowering her knife.

A flash of pain creased the Soldier's face. "No, it's… I'm Bucky, remember?" His voice was low, but she heard the edge of tension in it.

"I…" the Wyvern looked around the room. There was a bed with shredded sheets squeezed into the corner, and on the other side of the room a laptop sat open on a plastic table. "Where am I?"

"Peru," the man named Bucky said. "You're in Peru, Meg, remember? It was just a nightmare, you're here with me."

The Wyvern noticed that the hand holding the knife was shaking. Her whole body was shaking, covered in a sheen of sweat. She put her free hand on her forehead. She was malfunctioning – had she been poisoned? "I'm…" she shook her head. "What's my mission?"

She finally stopped glancing around the room, and met the man named Bucky's eyes. They were grey-blue, and glittering with turmoil. "Me," he murmured. "I'm your mission, Meg."

_The mission._

Maggie let out a shuddering sob as her nightmare finally released her, and the memories came flooding back. The knife fell from her trembling hand and she collapsed to her knees. Bucky was instantly by her side, tossing the knife away from her exposed skin and grabbing her arms, keeping her from toppling completely to the ground.

"Bucky," she gasped, her chest shuddering. "Bucky, I-"

"I know," he murmured, and pulled her into his chest, embracing her with flesh and metal arm alike. "I know, Meg. You're back."

His warm touch thawed some of the frozen terror lodged in her gut, but she couldn't control her breathing – she was gasping, choking for air. Bucky let her go.

"C'mon, Meg, breathe. I'm going to touch you, here-" He gripped her hands and placed one over her chest and the other over her diagphragm. "Breathe in."

She did as he said, closing her eyes and trying to take a long, slow breath through her nose.

But her heart was still pounding, her muscles spasming, and she needed more air. She gasped out and in again, eyes flying open. It reminded her of the dream, of drowning in faces with no escape.

Bucky was talking. "You're okay, you're safe. You've just got to breathe."

But she was drowning, and she couldn't escape.

"Wings," she gasped, gripping Bucky's arm. "My wings, I need my wings."

He was gone and back in an instant, dropping the duffle bag by her side and lifting out the first wing. Still hyperventilating, Maggie leaned forward and pulled up the back of her shirt. He slotted in the left wing, making her tilt to the side, and then the right.

When the weight settled on her spine, anchoring her down, Maggie was finally able to take in a long, slow breath. Using the familiar weight to centre herself, she remembered her coping techniques and went through them, counting her breaths, relaxing her muscles, and reminding herself that she was safe.  _Your name is Margaret Stark. You're with Bucky. He is your mission. You are a person._

When her breathing and heartrate settled, Maggie opened her eyes and settled more comfortably on the floor, folding her wings close to her body. Bucky had gone into the kitchen while she went through her relaxation techniques, and now he sat beside her.

"Here," he murmured, and handed her a glass of water.

She gave him a shaky smile, then noticed the careful way he brought his arm back to his body. "I hurt you-" she winced. She remembered punching his chest, swinging her heel spur at him, and felt sick. "I'm so sorry, Bucky."

"I'm alright," he reassured, tapping his sternum to prove it. "Just a bruise. You had me worried, there."

"I'm sorry, I should have recognised you-"

"No, Meg-" he ran a hand through his hair, and gathered his thoughts. He looked shaken. "I thought you forgot about yourself, about who you were. That hasn't happened for more than a second before."

Maggie sighed. She knew she had to talk about it, to keep the dream and the memories from festering, but the thought of it made her fingers tremble. She took another steadying breath. "I dreamed… there was a HYDRA technician who wanted to save me. He told me that my mission was to  _be free_ , and I didn't understand. The Project Leader shot him and wiped me."

Bucky watched her as she recounted the dream, his grey-blue eyes warm in the darkness.

"And then… people I killed, like I always dream about. They were drowning me. I remembered my trigger words, and I almost got through all of them before you woke me up." She shivered. Her metal wings were cold against her exposed skin, but she used the hard edges to remind herself of reality. "Bucky, what if I'd gotten through all of them?"

"I'm going to touch you," he warned, and when she nodded he put his flesh hand on her shoulder. He knew she liked the warmth, the way it pulled her away from her cold memories. "It was a dream – even if the words triggered you, the only one in control of you would be  _you_. And I'm here, I'd make sure you came back to yourself."

"But what if-"

"You did it before, Meg," he said, leveling his gaze. "You broke away from the words, away from HYDRA. You  _can_ do it."

She bowed her head. "I don't want it to take twenty years the next time."

"It won't. And there won't be a next time – that's part of the mission, making sure we stay people. I wouldn't let it happen to you, just like you wouldn't let it happen to me."

She looked up at that, and the sheer determination in Bucky's eyes reassured her. She let out a long breath, and ran her hands over her face. Wisps of hair were stuck to her sweaty forehead.

"I've done research on brainwashing," she said, shifting so she could see him better. "Most of the available data is about escaping domestic abusers or cults. They said the best way to break that kind of brainwashing is ending isolation, educating yourself, and getting through the denial and fear." She shrugged. "I guess we've done some of that. But I couldn't find anything about what was done to us – memory wipes, trigger words, programming… whatever HYDRA did, they kept it a secret." Bucky's face was solemn, but he didn't look as disappointed as she thought he'd be. She'd been looking into this for a while now. "I'm sorry," she added.

"Not your fault," he murmured. "Besides, I didn't think HYDRA ever meant for anyone to break out of the programming. I'd say we've made it pretty far already."

Maggie sighed. "You're right. I just hoped… I wanted to fix us, or at least that part of us. Make us safer."

"You're a genius, Meg," Bucky said. "But even you can't find the answers to impossible questions. It's alright."

She ground her jaw, but didn't continue the topic. Either she found the answer or she didn't, debating it with Bucky wouldn't do anything.

With his solid presence beside her, and the reassuring weight of her wings, the thunderstorm of emotions in Maggie's chest started to abate. Bucky had started meditating after his nightmares, but she hadn't really liked it when she tried. The stillness, and the emptiness in her head, reminded her too much of her blankness as the Wyvern. She preferred to be thinking, feeling, reminding herself that she was a person.

"There's something I want to try," she eventually said. "Not to get rid of the programming, but more to… make things a bit easier. It's… it's supposed to be done by a therapist, but I've done all the academic reading, and I hacked into an online training module, and I can teach you-"

Bucky huffed a laugh. "What is it, Meg?"

"It's called EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy. I access a bad memory, and then you…" she lifted two fingers and brought them back and forth across her face, following them with her eyes.

"Meg." He opened and closed his mouth."That sounds kinda…"

She smiled. "I know how it sounds. But the eye movement simulates what happens in REM – which happens when you're asleep, and dreaming – and the studies show that it helps to process the memory, make it less… sensitive." She ran a hand through her hair. "I thought it couldn't hurt to try."

He still looked skeptical. "It's not gonna hyptonise you or anything?" She chuckled. "You're thinking about a swinging pocketwatch, aren't you?"

Bucky looked embarrassed. "Well, it kinda sounds the same."

"Well no, it's not going to hypnotise me. Though I might cluck like a chicken afterwards if you ask me nicely." He laughed, and she rolled her eyes. "If anything, the EMDR is just going to make me remember the bad stuff, which is better than trying to forget about it. Would you be alright with doing that for me? To do the hand movements, and to be there if I… if something goes wrong."

Bucky's arm whirred. "Of course. You should do it on me, too."

"You don't have to-"

"I want to," he replied, with a quirk of his lips. "You think this might work, and I trust you. We can use all the help we can get."

She smiled back. They had been using every technique they could find to get even a modicum of control over their own brains: they'd been keeping up the cognitive behavioural therapy, reading self-help books, going out into the world more often (usually a brisk walk around the block while they both scanned the people and buildings around them), and even adjusting what they ate to get appropriate nutrition.

They'd tried out exposure therapy, within reason: after a dream where indistinct Russian voices whispered in the dark, Bucky had started listening to Russian podcasts. He'd eventually worked his way up to googling one of his victims whose name he remembered, and read their obituary. Maggie had been avoiding lying on her front, because of the flash-memories it sparked of lying face-down on an operating table, so she started intentionally lying on her front while working on the laptop. Each time one of them tried something they were uncomfortable with, the other was close by their side, ready to step in in the case of a panic attack or other bad reaction.

And they had been getting better, though sometimes it felt like they were taking one step forward and three steps backward. This nightmare had been the worst one Maggie'd had in weeks. She barely ever threw up upon waking any more. She counted that as a small kind of victory. They had to maintain constant vigilance whenever they went outside, but sometimes just leaving the safehouse to go for a walk, or to see a famous landmark, felt like weeks of therapy: exhausting, but with a sense of achievement.

"So the wings, huh?" Bucky eventually asked. They were still sitting on the timber floor of their safehouse, in the dark.

Maggie glanced up and frowned.

"They make you feel safe," he clarified, nodding at the folded metal. "That's why you wanted them."

She colored, and the wings unconsciously folded even tighter. "I know they shouldn't," she whispered. "I know they're a part of all the horrible things that HYDRA did to me. And you don't have the option of taking your arm on and off, I shouldn't-"

Bucky was shaking his head. "It's not a bad thing, that they make you feel safe. I just didn't realise – if they're a good thing, you should use 'em more often."

Maggie cocked her head and eyed him. It was difficult to make him out in the darkness, but he looked like he'd had a good day – the lines in his face weren't so deep, his hair was clean, and he didn't look gaunt like he did after a nightmare. "You think so?"

He looked right back at her. "I do. There's too much shit in the world that brings back the bad memories. If those wings help, then I wish you could wear them all the time."

The wings unfurled a little, the telescopic Adamantium skeleton extending silently. "Would you want the arm removed?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I don't think I'd complain too much if it was – it's a weapon. But we could use a weapon, just in case, and I'm… working on it." She knew that meant he was working on accepting it, turning over his thoughts and feelings about the arm in his therapy. She didn't push.

She centered her weight, and got to her feet in a fluid move. "You should sleep now," she said, rolling her shoulders and trying to work out the tension that the nightmares always brought. She shuffled her wings. Bucky stood as well, and cleared the shredded sheets off the bed.

"You're going to be alright?" he asked, as he rolled onto the mattress.

She took his place at the desk. "I'm going to be," she nodded. "I'm going to find that EMDR training module for when you wake up."

He smirked. "Giving me homework?"

"I'll give you more if you don't go to sleep."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, for one, am all for meditation! But I feel like Bucky and Maggie have different approaches and preferences when it comes to psychological healing, and I wanted to illustrate that here. Also, I've done my research on EMDR and as far as I can see the various meta studies have shown that it works to ~some~ degree. The World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association have accepted it as an effective form of therapy, and I think Maggie would latch on to this more scientific (ish?) approach. But don't do this at home, kids! There's a reason you need a therapist to do this stuff.
> 
> I hope the time skips have been okay so far. There's two and a bit years to cover before the events of Civil War, and though I very much love Bucky & Maggie, I can't cover every single day. So these chapters will include the important or pivotal moments in their journey. Hopefully it doesn't feel like I'm rushing through. That being said, there are a lot of moments I want to explore within those two years, so it shouldn't just feel like filler.
> 
> Please leave kudos and comments, hearing from y'all never fails to make me smile!


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to quickly say thank you to everyone who's left kudos, comments and subscriptions so far - over the past few chapters we hit some milestones, which was super exciting! It's so awesome to see and hear that you guys enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoy writing it, and I promise there are lots more good things coming. Keep up the comments, they give me life!
> 
> Sorry for all the Google-Translate-Spanish, but I like writing dialogue so what can you do *shrugs*. I've split the translations into their separate 'conversations' at the end to try to make things a little easier.
> 
> As I promised some of you, here's some more fluff.

 

May, 2014  
Cusco, Peru

Bucky and Maggie walked side-by-side over the cobblestones of the Plaza de Arma, with dust on their clothes and ratty backpacks on their shoulders.

"It was  _beautiful_ , Bucky," Maggie exclaimed, clutching her backpack straps and almost walking sideways in her eagerness to talk to him. "I didn't know places like that  _existed_ , and for so long! You'd think something that old would be long gone, crumbled to dust or at the bottom of the mountain, not still there for anyone to see," she closed her eyes to re-picture the beautiful ruins of Machu Picchu, which they had visited only that morning.

"You're gonna give a guy a complex, talking about  _old_ this and  _old_ that," Bucky grumbled, but when she opened her eyes she could see the teasing light in his face. Going to the ruins had been his idea – he'd remembered seeing a painting of Machu Picchu on a postcard in Brooklyn in the '30s, and said they couldn't pass up seeing the real thing.

"Oh, but compared to Machu Picchu you're like… a baby," Maggie teased back. "If Machu Picchu was a person, it would think you were a tiny, crying baby." She'd seen such a baby only a few days ago, screaming in its mothers arms at a café. Bucky had had to step on Maggie's foot to stop her from walking over to get a closer look. It had been so  _small._

"I'm a baby?" Bucky bumped his shoulder against hers as they turned into a side street. "What does that make you?"

But before Maggie could reply, they both spotted the police blockade at the other end of the street. There were five officers in black uniforms with yellow vests, stopping all foot traffic and inspecting papers.

Bucky and Maggie didn't tense, or turn around – it was too late for that, they could see the officer scanning all incoming pedestrians. Instead they stepped closer together, and Bucky slipped his metal arm around her shoulders, smiling down at her. She smiled back, and any observer would have written them off as a backpacking couple. Only Maggie could read the tension in Bucky's eyes, and he the tension in hers.

When they came to the line at the blockade, Bucky dropped the arm around her shoulders and took her hand. She squeezed the metal beneath the glove.

" _¡Ten tus papeles listos, por favor!_ " [" _Have your papers ready, please!_ "] called a female officer. The family in front of them started digging in their pockets for wallets.

Maggie processed the data: five officers, urban street, checking for papers. No sign of concealed backup, and no furtive glances at Maggie or Bucky. Whatever these officers were looking for, it wasn't two lethal ex-HYDRA assets. She reached into her canvas jacket to pull out their forged passports, and used the movement to scan the blockade. They weren't checking bags, and Maggie almost let out a sigh of relief. The weight of her wings, normally so comforting on her back, felt like a burning brand as they sat in her backpack. The rest of the contents of their backpacks weren't incriminating: clothes, a notebook, maps, a laptop, but she would have a difficult time explaining the wings.

Her anxiety didn't appear on her face or in her bearing, but Bucky sensed it anyway. He squeezed her hand gently. The firm metal grounded her, and she smiled up at him.

They'd reached the front of the line. Two officers beckoned them forward.

" _Papeles, por favor_ ," [" _Papers, please,_ "] called the older man, and Maggie handed them over with a smile. She was close by Bucky's side, still clutching his hand, but not so close that she drew attention to his arm.

The officer scanned their passports. The unsmiling faces of  _Margaret Smith_ and  _James Brooke_ looked back at him, along with stamps marking their travel from New Jersey, to Colombia, to Peru. Maggie and Bucky knew every detail about Smith and Brooke, from their fake birthdays to their fake addresses to their fake jobs as publicists.

"Tourists?" asked the officer, his eyes flicking up to their faces. "Staying where?"

"Our friend's house, in Rosaspata," Bucky explained. " _Hablamos español, si eso es más fácil?_ " [" _We speak Spanish, if that's easier?_ "]

The officer's face brightened, as did his younger counterpart's – he must have been the only English-speaking officer there.

" _Bueno_ ," [" _Good,_ "]the officer smiled, still flicking through their passports. " _¿Cuál es tu propósito aquí?_ " [" _What is your purpose here?_ "]

" _Acabamos de regresar de Machu Picchu_ ," [" _We just got back from Machu Picchu,_ "] Bucky smiled at Maggie.

The younger officer perked up at this. " _Ah, ¿lo disfrutaste?_ " [" _Ah, did you enjoy it?_ "]

Maggie's face broke open in a smile. " _Fue hermoso,_ " [" _It was beautiful,_ "] she sighed. " _Me dejó sin aliento._ " [" _It took my breath away._ "] Maggie had been infiltrating locations and fooling people her whole life, but she was tired of the lies. Some lies were necessary, but whenever they spoke with strangers like this she tried to be honest, to be as much 'herself' as possible. She didn't want to lose herself in multiple identities. Margaret Smith might be her shield, but she didn't want to stop being Maggie Stark.

" _Su español es muy bueno_ ," [" _Your Spanish is very good_ ,"] said the younger officer with a smile. Once, Maggie – or rather, the Wyvern – would have noted his flirting as a weakness to be exploited. Now, she was bemused.

" _Gracias_ ," [" _Thank you,_ "] she replied, smiling sweetly. The younger officer blushed. Maggie glanced at Bucky, and smirked when he rolled his eyes at her.

The older officer closed their passports, and tapped them against his hand. " _¿No cámaras?_ " [" _No cameras?_ "] He gestured at their backpacks, and Maggie felt her heart drop. Bucky's arm whirred, only loud enough for her to hear.

"No," she replied, still smiling. " _Somos eco-turistas_." [" _We're eco-tourists._ "] She'd heard the phrase on the hike up to Machu Picchu, and had googled it on the way back.

Her response had its intended effect: the officers shared a cynical glance, and then the older one gave them their passports back.

" _Adiós, eco-turistas!_ " [" _Goodbye, eco-tourists!_ "] he said with a smirk, waving them through the blockade.

"¡ _Adiós_!" [" _Goodbye!_ "] Maggie replied, pulling Bucky by the hand.

He nodded to the officers on his way past. " _¡Gracias!_ " [" _Thank you!_ "]

As Bucky and Maggie strolled away, she heard the officers chortling in their wake. She swung her hand in Bucky's. When they turned the corner, they didn't release each other's hands or visibly drop their covers, but they each sensed the other's relief.

"Eco-tourists?" Bucky asked, once they were a block away. Some of his hair had fallen out of his cap and hung in his face, and his brow was furrowed. It might have been the adrenaline from their near miss, or her left over excitement from Machu Picchu, but Maggie found herself hit with a rush of fondness for her friend. She knocked her shoulder into his, but kept him steady with her continued hold on his hand.

"I'll explain it later," she smiled.

He huffed. "Fine. Good work, back there."

"You too. We need a contingency for bag checks."

"We do," he agreed, eyes flicking over her backpack. They discussed that contingency for the last few blocks to their safehouse, still holding hands. Maggie felt good despite the long day; her feet felt light, and her breath came easy. The EMDR therapy was working, making her memories less painful after multiple sessions. The rest of it was helping, too – she still had bad days, and bad weeks, but she found herself smiling more often, having fewer nightmares, enjoying living in the world a bit more. They were four months free of HYDRA, and they had hope for the future. They'd have to stay in hiding, always on the run, but that was a small cost if they got to be people.

They climbed up the fire escape to their safehouse, and discussed contingency plans and Machu Picchu while they learned to make curry. Later that evening, with the lingering taste of chilli in her mouth, Maggie fell asleep to the sound of Bucky's pen scratching in his notebook. She had a nightmare in which she killed the police officers to protect her wings, but when she woke Bucky brought her a glass of water and talked her through her coping techniques.

It was a good day, and she'd had precious few of those in her life.

 

* * *

 

May, 2014  
Azangaro, Peru

"Oh come on, that is  _not_ a word."

"Don't like it, look it up."  
Maggie squinted at Bucky, then back at the addition to the word  _bug_ that he'd just laid down on the Scrabble board.

"What does it mean?" They'd had this debate over nearly half the words currently on the board – Bucky kept playing 1930s and 1940s slang words, and Maggie kept playing engineering and scientific terms.

"Is the Jitterbug not a thing any more?" Bucky asked innocently.

Rolling her eyes, Maggie pulled the laptop across the table and typed in the word. She smiled at the Wikipedia result. "It's a  _dance_ ," she exclaimed, and clicked on the first video result. As it loaded, she cocked her head at Bucky. "You used to dance?"

He shrugged, and they both looked back at the screen as fast-paced jazz began to play. The black-and-white footage showed couples in swing dresses and shiny black shoes dancing back and forth across the screen, arms and legs flying. When the video ended, Maggie looked back at Bucky, eyes wide.

"You used to dance like  _that_?"

He laughed at her dumbstruck expression. "Ah, not quite like that. I tended to fudge the steps a bit, but my partners never minded."

She shook her head. "You sound like you were a menace."

"Might've been worse, if we'd had music like this back then," he grinned, gesturing at the laptop again. He was referring to the music she'd been playing throughout the evening: rock and roll and hits from her childhood, everything from Pink Flloyd to Led Zeppelin to Pat Benatar. Now that they'd finished watching the jitterbug video, the original video playlist had cued up Michael Jackson's  _The Way You Make Me Feel._ This one was familiar to her, like most of the others had been, and she tapped her finger along to the beat.

She grinned. "So you like it?"

He nodded, eyes glinting, and then cocked his head at the music video on the laptop. "Did you use to dance like  _that_?" On the screen, Michael Jackson flicked his heels and thrust his hips.

Maggie laughed. "Not that I remember. I  _do_ remember that Tony knew how to do the moonwalk, though."

"The what?"

She cut the song short to find a video of the moonwalk, and laughed again at Bucky's astounded face. "Now imagine my twenty-year-old brother doing that from one end of the workshop to the other with his arms full of frayed wiring." She played her next word –  _pascal_.

Bucky shook his head and consulted his own tiles. "I can't believe you were allowed to listen to some of these songs," he said. She'd seen him raising his eyebrows at a few lyrics and scenes in the music videos. She'd read a bit about how social mores had changed over the years, but not much.

"I suppose I didn't have a whole lot of supervision," she said, shrugging. "And half the time I was in the workshop with Tony, who wasn't too concerned with censoring his music."

Bucky shook his head again, and watched Michael Jackson balance on the points of his shoes. "I've missed out on a lot," he murmured.

Maggie cocked her head, and considered the solemnity that had fallen over him. "But now you've got the chance to catch up," she replied. "There's seventy years of music and books and films and who knows what else that you get to enjoy." He brightened a little. "I haven't experienced much of it either, if that's any comfort."

He played another word. "We'll have to start doing this properly, then. Go decade by decade, or something."

"That's a good idea. Maybe we should start with the last ten years, though, since neither of us know anything about them. Oh!" she jumped up from the table, and retrieved her backpack from where it was hidden under the safehouse floorboards. Bucky rolled his eyes at her abandonment of the game, but she was back in a moment. "I forgot to show you this, I bought it yesterday." She pulled a slim device from the back pocket, showing Bucky the black screen and the silver casing, which read  _iPod._ They both knew what a smart phone was, had used them for missions, so this wasn't a particularly life-altering discovery. They'd been purchasing and discarding burner phones for the past few months, in case they ever got separated.

Bucky cocked an eyebrow. "Another burner phone…?"

"No, this plays music!" Maggie turned the iPod on and opened the music app. "Well most of our burner phones would too, but we need to keep those turned off. But I've disabled any GPS or tracking capability on this, so it's like a little… you didn't have Walkmans in the '40's, did you?"

Bucky looked mystified, so she took that as a no. "Well what did you play music on?"

"Record players," he deadpanned. "Radio."

Maggie grinned. "This is like that, but  _smaller._ But no actual records. Or radio waves, so I guess not like that." She plugged the headphones in and showed him how it worked. Once she was sure he was suitably impressed, she put the iPod away.

"I remembered using one for a mission a few years ago, so I bought it on an impulse. I'm going to  _fill_ it with songs, Bucky. Everything I can find."

He smiled at her enthusiasm, then nodded at the laptop. "Got anything from my time?"

Her hands stilled. "Name a band."

"Well you can't go wrong with Glenn Miller."

They filled the next few hours with scratchy big-band and swing music, Scrabble, and cards. Bucky told Maggie the memories the music brought back – mostly of smoky dance halls and the women he'd taken there, or the radio in Steve's apartment. The game and the music was a welcome lightness in the safehouse, as the months of constant vigilance and sharing each others' space had been getting to them. It was good to remember that they were people, and that there was more connecting them than their tragic shared history. As the game wound down and Bucky prepared to take the first sleeping shift, Maggie turned off the music and began doing research on what she'd missed.

He didn't even complain when he was jolted out of sleep a few minutes later at her exclamation of: " _Michael Jackson_   _died_?"

 

* * *

 

June, 2014  
Uncharted rainforest, Bolivia

"Y'know, when I said I hiked through the rainforest to get to Iquitos, I didn't say I enjoyed it."

Maggie smiled at Bucky's back as they trudged through the underbrush, their clothes sticking to their skin. Insects and bird calls were a constant chorus.

"This was your idea," she reminded him, climbing over a mossy log.

"That doesn't sound right," he grumbled. "Alright, we're nearly at the top."

They'd left the beaten track three days ago, using the vast rainforest to really lose any chance of a digital or paper trail as they crossed the border into Bolivia. They'd left the day after Maggie's twenty eighth birthday, which they had celebrated by going to see a local dance performance. Bucky had made dinner and presented her with a bottle of Tequila and a tub of ice-cream, which they shared. He also gave her a postcard from Machu Picchu, on which he'd written  _from one eco-tourist to another_ ; a pair of safety goggles for her constant tinkering; and a Rubik's cube.

Her presents were now tucked in a waterproof section of her bag as they fought their way through the Amazon. They both had wilderness survival training, but the constant heat and wildness of the jungle had gotten tricky now and then. All of HYDRA's training couldn't help the former assets when it came to avoiding leeches and mosquitos. Maggie was looking forward to returning to civilisation, where there were showers and clean beds and laptop chargers. Bucky was clearly not enjoying it either, if his intermittent grumbling was anything to go by.

She got the sense that the complaining was a hangover from his time with the Commandos, a kind of ritual, so sometimes she complained right back and grinned when his grievances got more and more serious.  _And there are_ leaves  _stuck in my_ arm, he'd announced yesterday with the air of someone winning a disagreement, holding up his bared metal limb as proof. Maggie had laughed at him as she picked foliage out of the metal joints.

But there were benefits to their discomfort – first, the complete assurance that they were off the grid. Second, the incredible views of the forest and their chance encounters with animals: they'd seen a curious squirrel monkey on their first day, and a capybara had walked right over Bucky's legs the night before. The third benefit was part of the reason Bucky had suggested their jungle voyage in the first place, and it was about to be realised.

They finally reached the top of the mountain they'd been climbing, not that there was much to look at – the forest was as thick as ever, obscuring any sightlines. The ground had levelled out, however, and Maggie could sense the higher altitude.

Bucky turned around, wiping his forehead, and cocked an eyebrow. "Well?"

She nodded. "This is good."

"And there won't be another person around for miles."

"Let's hope," she smirked, then turned around and shrugged off her backpack. Her fingers were tingling with anticipation, and though she tried not to show it she knew Bucky could sense her excitement. He helped her pull her folded wings out of her backpack, and he carefully slotted them into place through the pre-cut holes in the back of her shirt.

Inexplicably, the extra weight made Maggie feel lighter. She'd worn the wings a few times, usually after a nightmare or a panic attack, but she hadn't flown since they'd snuck onto the container ship months ago. She hadn't  _really_ flown since the Helicarrier battle. If she thought about it, she hadn't flown just for the pleasure of it ever. The thought sent a thrill down her Adamantium-reinforced spine.

Maggie closed her eyes and unfurled her wings, feeling the moist Amazon air brush against the cybernetic neurons. When the Adamantium skeleton was fully extended, she let out a long breath. It was a  _relief,_ to stretch out like this.

"Good?" came Bucky's voice, and she opened her eyes. He was standing a few feet away, his face unreadable as he took in the sight of her with outstretched wings.

Maggie flexed her wings, feeling the pull through her moorings and across the muscles in her back. "Good," she confirmed, and then looked upward. "I'll be right back."

"Take your time," Bucky murmured, and offered her a smile.

Maggie pushed off the ground and fired up her wings, leaping through the underbrush and crashing through the canopy, one arm raised to protect her face. After a second of resistance, she burst through the uppermost branches and into the sky.

It was a beautiful day. Maggie whooped as she spiralled up through the air, stretching her limbs in the light of the warm sun. The wind whistled in her ears and pulled at her sweaty clothes, and she laughed at the feeling. She'd  _missed_ this.

She soared up to the clouds, then rolled over into a horizontal glide. The world below her was nothing but green, for miles and miles until the forest met the blue horizon. Maggie beat her wings, laughing at the feeling of the air slipping over her and pushing her up, toward the sun. She let her eyes roam over the forest below, noting the dips and rises of the terrain, and the distant glint of a river. A flock of birds rose out of the canopy a few miles away, their beating wings a shock of blue and white against the greenery. Maggie flipped into a somersault, then a nosedive spiral. Her muscles knew what to do, knew how to pull and stretch to cut precise lines in the air. After a few more tricks, she flared her wings to slow down, admiring the blue-green horizon once more.

She sighed. This was the first time she could just  _be,_ while flying. There was no one to kill, or to spy on, no mission to carry out. Though now she thought of it…

 

* * *

 

Even though he was expecting it, Bucky flinched when Meg crashed back through the canopy, showering him in broken twigs and flurrying leaves. She awkwardly flared her wings in the confined undergrowth, pulling herself to a halt, and dropped to the ground. She was windswept and flush-faced when she looked up at him, her face split in a huge smile.

Bucky couldn't help but smile at the sight of it. As she'd broken further out of her programming, he'd noticed her enormous capacity for excitement and enjoyment in life – each new thing she discovered was a treasure, and she always wanted to share it with him.

"Good?" He asked, still smiling.

She nodded breathlessly, then beckoned to him.

Immediately catching her meaning, Bucky hesitated. "I don't know, Meg-"

"Come on," she breathed, her eyes alight. "It's incredible. You don't get a view like this every day."

Bucky put his hands on his hips. He knew Meg had been looking forward to this for days. He didn't fully understand her love for her wings, but he supposed if he'd had something he enjoyed about being the Winter Soldier he'd have latched onto that, too. But there was something about hanging miles in the air that made his gut churn. He chased the feeling, then realised that – of course – he was remembering his weightless fall from the train in the Swiss Alps.

As if reading his thoughts, some of the excitement faded from Meg's face. "You don't have to," she backtracked. "I'm not saying you  _have_ to. But… I wouldn't let you go." Her eyes were serious as she looked at him, her chest still heaving from her flight and her wings shuffling restlessly.

Bucky took a fortifying breath. "Alright."

"You're sure?"

He nodded. "Wouldn't want to climb up this goddamn hill for nothing," he said with a smirk, and paced toward her. Once he'd turned, she wrapped her arms around his front, locking her hands over her wrists. Bucky lowered his arms over hers, and clenched his jaw. Meg's breath tickled the back of his ear.

And then there was a roar of engines, a whirlwind of movement, and Bucky barely had enough time to lift his metal arm to break the canopy above their heads before they crashed into the open air. For the first minute, while Meg pulled them both upwards, Bucky's whole body was clenched and he didn't know where to look – the world was a sickening blur of blue and green, with the wind screaming in his ears.

But then she levelled out, and his instincts kicked in and he found himself flying with her, tilting his body with the angle of her wings, his feet knocking against hers. Her arms were warm around his chest.

Bucky let out a shaky laugh and stared at the wide green forest that stretched out below them.

Sensing some of the tension leave his body, Meg chuckled in his ear. "Good?" she shouted over the whistling wind.

Bucky didn't know why he'd been reminded of his fall from the train – this was a world apart, this was  _flying._  Instead of responding, he stretched his arms out, so his fingertips brushed her outstretched Adamantium wings.

"That tickles," she laughed, and he pulled his fingers away.

"Sorry."

"Don't be," she called, and then with plenty of warning banked sideways, so Bucky could see the open expanse of the blue sky above them. Now that her engines weren't roaring in his ears, and the wind had died down a little, it was almost quiet. They watched the forest undulate beneath them, as the wind slipped over their faces and buoyed Meg's wings.

Before she pulled them into a gentle descent, Bucky felt a rush of gratitude that he was here, away from HYDRA, flying with Meg. His life was by no means easy – he was a man out of time, and he missed Steve more with every returned memory. But if this was what he had – Meg's laughter in his ear, the world soaring past beneath his feet – it was a lot more than he thought he deserved, most days.

When they crunched back through the canopy and landed by their bags, Bucky ran a hand through his hair and turned to face Meg.

"Yeah," he breathed, grinning. "I can see why you like that."

 

* * *

 

June, 2014  
Cochabamba, Bolivia

It was a warm day in the lakeside city, but Bucky and Maggie weren't alone among the people on the streets trying to get some exercise done.

They'd been relieved upon re-joining civilization, but living side-by-side in a tiny safehouse quickly got frustrating. There'd also been some news about Captain America, with U.S. politicians demanding that he present himself at the hearings about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fall. There was no response from the man himself, but the back-and-forth sledging on the news networks had made Bucky edgy.

So they'd decided to get out of the safehouse, but couldn't agree on an activity. Eventually they'd just stashed their backpacks and set out on a run, restraining themselves to non-super-soldier speeds but still dashing past the sedate joggers on the streets.

Maggie gave Bucky his space, as she could sense his thoughts churning over Rogers' absence from the public eye. The last they'd actually heard of him was from the hospital reports she'd accessed in January. She wondered if Rogers had found any sign of the former assets – she had no doubt that he was looking for his friend, but she and Bucky were experts at disappearing. But she supposed he did have resourceful friends – her genius brother and the Black Widow, for example.

She shook her head and focused on running, on the firm concrete slamming against the balls of her feet and the slight exertion in her lungs. She'd have to push herself to really feel the workout, but that would definitely draw attention. She considered challenging Bucky to a race on a remote road somewhere, then filed the thought away.

Her most recent influx of memories had been about a cold building with marble floors and hard, young faces. The memory of the building came with a flurry of sensations: the bite of snow under her hands, steel in the night, false smiles and a voice whispering  _do svidaniya, chudobishche._ [ _Goodbye, monster._ ]

It had taken her a few days to put a name to the memories: the Red Room. Relentless training, and girls who hated her. She'd had a nightmare about a dark-haired girl, lifeless at her feet. She'd been so young.  _Maggie_ had been so young. They'd all been young, too young for what Madame B. and her teachers shaped them into.

These memories hung heavy on Maggie, a cloak she couldn't shrug off. The running helped, pumping life through her limbs and heart, but she knew she didn't have the luxury of forgetting.

She didn't wake screaming any more. The various therapies had achieved that much, though it had been an uphill battle. Mostly she and Bucky weathered their guilt and pain, with good days in between.

Fifty feet ahead, Bucky had stopped running and stood stock still on the sidewalk, fists clenched. Maggie approached slowly, easing around him to take in his expression.

He looked… lost. Like he'd been running to get somewhere, but had now forgotten where he was meant to be going. She knew the feeling.

"Bucky?" her voice was soft.

His eyes focused on her, and he opened and closed his mouth a few times. His forehead was sweaty, but she knew the run would hardly have exhausted him. "I need… a drink."

She cocked her head. "It's midday."

"Not alcohol, just… a drink."

He looked so tired and lost that she didn't push it. She didn't think it was anything in particular that had brought this on, it was just… the chaos in their minds caught up with them, more often than they would like.

"Okay," she murmured. "I'm going to touch you."

He nodded, and she slipped her right arm around his concealed metal one. She gently steered him down the sidewalk, towards the nearest coffee shop. The sun beat down on their necks, and walking almost seemed harder than running. Bucky's arm was at least cool under his sleeve, which was a relief to Maggie's overheated skin. She guided him into the first coffee shop she saw, and sighed at the cool air-conditioning inside. The change in temperature eased some of the tension in Bucky's large frame, and he murmured a thanks to her.

"Just carrying out the mission," she murmured back, with a half-smile, and let him go so he could sit at a booth near the back, with the best sightlines. She approached the counter and ordered two drinks from the young barista – iced tea for Bucky, because she knew he liked the fruity taste, and an iced chocolate with lots of cream for herself, because she'd recently discovered that she had a sweet tooth. She carried the drinks to the booth, and Bucky gave her a tired smile. Spanish guitar songs lilted through the coffee shop's speakers.

"Tell me something," Bucky asked, after taking a long drink from his iced tea.

Maggie bit her lip, tapping her finger against the condensation on her glass. "I've been doing research into the Internet," she began. "Well, I already knew about it, knew basically everything about how it worked and how to exploit it when it came to HYDRA. But there's all this stuff I was never exposed to," she continued, veering back to her original point. "Like social media? I initially used it to get information about targets, but when I look at it now…" she shook her head. "It's incredible. There's whole communities of people online, and they never have to meet, but the Internet is like this whole new world where people can go to do the things they're interested in, speak to people who like the same things. You know a whole lot of dating is done via the internet, now? It's not quite dance-halls and 'stepping out', any more," she teased, and was rewarded with a small smile.

"People still dance, though," Bucky murmured over his ice tea.

"They do," Maggie reassured him, though she knew they'd both seen glimpses of the celebrity dancing TV shows. "Sometimes new dance moves get really popular on the internet, and they spread across the world like that-" she snapped her fingers to illustrate her point. "I saw a video of Tony dancing to this song called  _Single Ladies_." She started laughing at the memory. "I'm pretty sure he was drunk, it was from a while ago, but it was… do you want to see?" She was reaching into her pocket for her iPod when Bucky's attention flickered toward the counter of the coffee shop.

Maggie carried out the movement, pulling out her iPod and searching for the video, but she could read the tension in Bucky's shoulders – something was wrong. More than that, she could hear the commotion behind her. A male voice, rising in volume with each word, complained that something was wrong with his order, and that the barista needed to fix it  _immediately._

Maggie put her iPod away and turned around in her seat. The man was in his mid-fifties, near-bald, and his face was screwed-up and red as he leaned over the counter to yell at the wide-eyed young barista.

" _¡Eres una idiota! ¡Quiero un reembolso, y será mejor que no lo arruines también!"_ [" _You're an idiot! I want a refund, and you'd better not ruin that too!_ "] He brandished the drink in question at the girl, very nearly spilling it.

" _Lo siento señor,_ " [" _I'm sorry, sir,_ "] the young girl behind the counter said, her face red and her eyes wide. " _Solo digame lo que pediste y yo-_ " [" _Just tell me what you ordered and I'll-_ "]

"¡ _Ya te dije lo que pedí_!" [" _I already told you what I ordered!_ "] The man screamed, slamming a hand on the counter and knocking a stack of menus and her tip jar to the ground. The girl backed up against the other side of her workspace, colour draining from her face. " _Eres una maldita idiota_ _-_ " [" _You are a damn idiot-_ "]

Maggie had heard enough. Before the man could finish his insult she whirled out of her seat and shouted " _Déjala en paz, ¡está ofreciendo arreglarlo!_ " [" _Leave her alone, she's offering to fix it!_ "]

The angry man did leave the barista alone, but had apparently decided that Maggie was a worthier target of insulting. She glared at him as he shouted that this was none of her business, and that she was a meddling bitch. He hurled another insult at the barista, and Maggie sensed what the man was going to do before he did it: his muscles bunched and he pivoted, launching his hot drink toward the frightened girl.

But the drink was only in the air for a second before Maggie caught it, spilling some of the liquid on the ground but keeping it mostly steady. The man finally shut up, startled by her rapid movement.

Maggie levelled him with her deadliest glare, and Bucky materialised at her shoulder. He was physically more imposing, a large bulk between the angry customer and the young barista.

Faced with the murder-eyes from Bucky and Maggie, the angry customer took a step back, all of his bluster and fury silenced.

Bucky broke the tense silence. " _Salir ahora_ ," [" _Leave now,_ "] he bit out.

Visibly spooked, the red-faced man huffed and stormed out of the coffee shop, slamming the door behind him. There were a few other customers in the shop, who looked from the rattling door to Maggie and Bucky with open mouths.

After taking another moment to ensure that there was no further danger, Maggie turned to the counter and gently set down the man's drink.

" _¿Estás bien?_ " [" _Are you okay?_ "] she murmured, softening her face and her voice to soothe the girl, who now had tears spilling down her cheeks. " _¿Por qué no me das una toalla de papel para que pueda limpiar esto?_ " [" _Why don't you give me a paper towel so I can clean this up?_ "] She gestured to the small spill on the wooden floor.

At Maggie's question, the girl took a deep breath and shook her head, lifting her trembling hands to wipe her face. " _Gracias_ ," [" _Thank you,_ "] she breathed, meeting Maggie's eyes. _"Pero puedo hacerlo._ " [" _But I can do it._ "] She smiled at Maggie and then at Bucky, who'd gone to the door to make sure the man had left. He nodded at the girl and then met Maggie's eyes, silently communicating that the man was gone.

" _Verdaderamente, gracias,_ " [" _Truly, thank you._ "] the girl said, bouncing back from her shock and fear. She rallied herself and reached for a roll of paper towel. " _¿Te gustaría una bebida gratis?_ " [" _Would you like a free drink?_ "]

Maggie smiled, but shook her head. She'd made a scene, and she knew better than to stick around. " _Gracias pero no. Tenemos que irnos._ " [" _Thanks, but no. We have to be going._ "] She took another moment to make sure that the barista wasn't in danger of bursting into tears again, then turned. But before she could think better of it, she turned back.

" _Él es un hombre pequeño,_ " [" _He is a small man,_ "] she murmured, so only the girl could hear. She looked right into her eyes. " _No dejes que él entre en tu cabeza._ " [" _Don't let him into your head._ "]

She could sense Bucky's nervous energy from across the room, so she nodded decisively at the wide-eyed girl and turned on her heel, striding out the door that Bucky held open for her.

Once they were a few blocks away, Bucky let out a heavy breath. "Steve used to give me heart attacks doing that sort of thing," he huffed. "It makes me feel a little better knowing that you're not about to get beat up in an alley, but still… give a guy a little warning next time, alright?"

Maggie scanned his face, and realised that – inexplicably – his sombre mood had lifted.

She gave him a wry grin. "I'll do my best."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I work in customer service? I've luckily never had anyone this bad, but I've heard too many stories that sound like this but without the friendly neighborhood former assassins.
> 
> Again, remember to kudos, subscribe and comment!
> 
> Also: at the end of this week I'm moving to Japan (!), next chapter will be up on time as usual and I'm not anticipating any delays after that as I'll have wifi, but if I do mess up somehow and update a day late, I apologise in advance! I'll do my best to not let this disrupt the update schedule, though.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note on translations: Last chapter someone mentioned that having all the translations at the end makes for tricky reading, and I agree. So I've edited past chapters to include the translations in brackets within the body of the story, and I'll use this format from now. I also won't be translating little things like hello, goodbye, thank you, and Soldat. We all know what soldat is by now. Happy reading!

 

July, 2014  
Asunción, Paraguay

The library was silent save for the hum of air conditioning, hushed whispers, and footsteps on the marble staircase. Bucky and Maggie had secured a tactical location, a table with two plush chairs set against the window – the light from behind them obscured their faces, and gave them excellent sightlines down the tightly-squeezed shelves. They had stacks of books on the table before them, and they were constantly aware of the shuffling feet and low breathing around them. To the casual observer, they appeared to be any regular couple at the library.

They'd started visiting libraries three months ago, soon after they began looking into therapies, originally for better access to scientific and therapeutic material. But they kept coming back – they could easily avoid cameras, and it helped to get out of their safehouses every now and then. Maggie liked the hush that filled a library, as if something wonderful was about to happen. Bucky remembered going to his local library in Brooklyn for school assignments, and to pore over books with Steve.

They'd gone to the library today because that morning Maggie had looked up from their dog-eared copy of  _Unf*ck Yourself_ , and said: "Bucky?"

"Mm?"

"Do you think it's a bit ironic that we spend most our time reading self-help books?"

At that, he had looked up from his own book –  _Purpose Driven Life_ , and huffed a laugh. "Ironic, probably. Necessary? Definitely." But five minutes later he'd closed his book, and taken hers out of her hands. "C'mon, let's go to the library."

So after wandering the stacks, grabbing books that looked interesting – in shifts, while the other held their tactical location – they sat in their plush chairs and read in silence. Maggie had curled up in her chair, her copy of  _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ (Or rather,  _Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal_ ) balanced on her knees. She'd originally been flicking through a stack of scientific journals, but she always found herself drawn to story books. She and Bucky had both read  _The Hobbit_ and  _The_   _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, and she was branching out. She found she had a taste for escapist fiction; books and stories that drew her into another world.

Bucky, meanwhile, had one leg tucked under the other as he held Carl Sagan's  _Cosmos_ steady with his gloved metal hand. At times he furrowed his brow and asked Maggie to clarify a certain term or idea, and when she didn't know he looked it up. He liked reading a bit of everything, particularly sci-fi. Lately he'd been reading up on world movements since the 1940s, and after getting thoroughly absorbed in the civil rights movement and women's rights, had been particularly excited by the space race. Maggie still smiled at the memory of the elated gleam in his eyes when he found out that men had walked on the moon, and that there were photographs of the earth from space.

He'd read up on nearly every major rocket launch of the twentieth and twenty-first century, and was now branching out to more complex theories. When Maggie accused him of being a gigantic nerd he'd looked up the term, then shrugged and owned it.

And his excitement bled over into her own research – she'd found herself reading up on astrophysics and rocket science almost on autopilot, turning her genius brain toward the topic so she could understand Bucky when he raved about all the progress that had been made since he went to her dad's 'World's Exposition of Tomorrow' in 1943.

Maggie had taken to illegally downloading scientific journals online to satiate her vast appetites for knowledge. She'd recently emailed some prominent scientists from a proxy email address with questions about their work, and gotten some very satisfying responses. Her favourite response had been from Doctor Jane Foster, who had recently become the world's foremost astronomer due to her work on Einstein-Rosen Bridges and the Convergence. The email was actually written by an assistant called Darcy, who passed along the relevant information and wrote  _Here ya go, smarty-pants. Get your sweet, sweet Space on._

When Maggie wasn't trying to fix her brain she was reading, and when she wasn't reading she was tinkering – usually on her wings, with tools she picked up at hardware stores and workshops, but sometimes Bucky asked her to service his arm. She was nervous about working on the arm, worried it would trigger Bucky's memories of HYDRA, but he said he didn't mind when it was her.

Maggie and Bucky sat in their chairs until dark fell, when they reluctantly relinquished their books and joined the trickle of patrons leaving the library. Maggie's mind was awhirl with the children's book she'd been reading, and Bucky was contemplating the enormity of the universe.

"Want to make that curry thing?" Maggie eventually asked, as they strode down the sidewalk toward their safehouse.

"Yeah, alright."

 

* * *

 

July, 2014  
Avengers Tower, New York City

Sam put down the Kiev file with a sigh and took a long swig of his coffee. He didn't know why he kept going back to it, when it had yielded nothing more than information about the Winter Soldier's old missions, and the tortures inflicted on him. He supposed the file was some of the only concrete evidence that the Winter Soldier existed, beyond his own memories and blurry footage from the Helicarrier battle.

Their search had made very little progress since the discovery of the Québec base, months ago. All they had on Barnes and the Wyvern after the Helicarrier battle was the CCTV still of them on the D.C. street near the bank fire.

The hunt for HYDRA had gone much more successfully – they were being taken down across the globe, one base falling after another. Steve and the rest of the Avengers spent most of their time on that, while Sam followed up the 'Missing Persons Case'.

Not that the two weren't related – Steve had come back from one mission with a video file of an interrogation of one of the HYDRA agents. When asked about the Winter Soldier, the agent had scoffed and said he was a myth. When asked about the Wyvern, his face hardened.

"I was  _important_  enough to be rescued by the Wyvern," he spat at Steve, who was out of frame. The agent lifted his shirt sleeve, exposing pearly white claw-mark scars in the meat of his shoulder and arm. "But she doesn't give you your life back without a reminder." The agent hadn't known anything else about the Wyvern beyond the colour of her wings and goggles, and that she hadn't said a word to him.

Stark had sort of conflated the search for his sister and destroying HYDRA. Sam thought that was fair enough, seeking revenge against the group that had kidnapped and brainwashed his sister, and maybe killed his parents. The problem was, Stark spent every spare minute combing through the S.H.I.E.L.D. dump. Sam could see the signs of a man on an obsessive mission – from what he could tell, Stark didn't get much sleep, and he was pushing away Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes in favor of the search. On June 2nd, his sister's birthday, Stark had found the nearest fight - a human trafficking ring posing as a modelling agency - and taken them out with extreme prejudice. Then he had come back and gotten blind drunk. But Sam wasn't the guy's therapist, and he was in no position to tell him to quit looking, so he kept his head down and ran leads with J.A.R.V.I.S.'s help. The A.I. was a godsend.

"Is everything alright, Mr Wilson?" asked J.A.R.V.I.S., as if he'd read Sam's mind. Sam really hoped the A.I. couldn't read minds.

He sighed. "We're not having a lot of luck, are we?"

"It  _is_  difficult to run a search with no data."

Sam rolled his eyes and ran a critical eye over the paperwork on the desk before him. "Did you know her?" he eventually asked. "The Wyvern."

"Miss Stark's kidnapping occurred before Sir designed me. She did, however, know Edwin Jarvis, my namesake."

"Huh. Are you… like him?"

"Being an artificial intelligence, I cannot say that I am like any living or deceased person. I believe I share his accent, however, and his compulsion to care for the Starks."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "The  _Starks_ , huh?"

"Indeed. Sir has made it my alpha protocol to protect not only himself, but his sister."

There was a long silence after that. Sam had been so caught up in finding  _Barnes,_ that the Wyvern had seemed more like a lead. He'd overheard a lot of what they'd found in the Québec base, but he'd been in the Quinjet, so he hadn't gotten the full effect.

But of course, of _course,_ she was someone's sister, someone's daughter. Not only that, she was  _Tony Stark's_ sister. Sam didn't think the guy knew how to have functioning relationships, but he knew the A.I. was important to him. Naming his sister as the person to be protected alongside himself meant a lot, he knew. He just hoped the kid didn't have the knowledge or the desire to exploit it.

After a moment, Sam scoffed at himself. He knew she'd have the  _knowledge._ From what he'd heard in Canada she was every bit the genius her brother was, and now – if she and Barnes had really broken with HYDRA – she was free to use that genius for herself. No wonder she and Barnes appeared to have vanished off the face of the planet. In 2013, Tony had shown just how complete a Stark disappearing act could be, and he hadn't had a fraction of the training given to the Wyvern.

Sam sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. He was a therapist, he was trained to get inside people's heads. But when it came to Barnes and the Wyvern –  _Margaret_  – he had no clue. Would they have stayed together, or would they see each other as enemies? Had they burned down the bank together? Where would they go?

He stared at the printout of the CCTV still from D.C., at the two figures in dark clothes with their backs to the camera. He shook his head.

"Alright, J.A.R.V.I.S., let's run through the data from the S.H.I.E.L.D. dump again."

 

* * *

 

August, 2014  
Los Andes, Chile

Bucky and Meg nursed their coffees from the best tactical position in the coffee shop, squeezed together in one side of a booth as they shared the iPod's headphones. They'd initially set out to go for a walk, but there was a bitter wind howling through the town, so they sought warmth in the nearest coffee shop instead. The good thing about the higher altitudes in Los Andes was that Bucky was finally able to throw on lots of layers without seeming suspicious. He took full advantage of it, and was currently wearing three layers and a windbreaker, as well as his gloves. Meg wasn't dressed quite as warmly, but she'd thrown on a bright red scarf because she said she liked the color.

The coffee shop wasn't very busy. Bucky supposed everyone else had been sensible enough to stay home. Meg sipped her steaming coffee, and tapped her finger along with the beat of the song – a pop hit from the early 2000s that was making Bucky wrinkle his nose.

"No good?" she smirked.

He shrugged, and his many-layered arm knocked against hers. "Not used to it, is all."

"You're not meant to  _get used_ to music," she teased. "You either like it, or you don't."

"I didn't realise you'd become an expert," he replied, his lips quirking. The song changed to a sixties hit that they both liked, and they returned to their coffees.

Bucky didn't necessarily enjoy all of Meg's music tastes, since she'd developed a habit of listening to a wide variety of genres in no apparent order, but he liked that she was expanding and finding the things she enjoyed. She always knew which bands he was going to like before he heard them, though, so he trusted her when she told him he  _had_ to listen to some song or other. She was also always stopping to listen to street performers and live music, but he didn't mind the delays.

Bucky scanned the street outside the window, noting the gust of snow that had just blown in. A hard voice in the back of his mind noted  _lowered visibility: optimal for stealth._ He shook it away and focused on the flash-memory of fresh snow in Brooklyn, and snowball fights with kids from down the block.

Abruptly, Meg tensed beside him. Bucky followed her eyeline to the television hanging from the corner of the shop – the news was on, and a rugged-up reporter was speaking rapidly into a microphone in the middle of a snowstorm. The headline below the reporter read, in Spanish,  _Boy Missing in Los Penitentes Ski Resort._  Bucky's brow furrowed – that wasn't far from here, just across the border in Argentina.

" _Encienda el sonido, por favor_ ," [ _"Turn on the sound, please,"_ ] called another customer, and the manager of the coffee shop hit a switch on the television. The reporter's harried voice filtered through the shop, explaining that a ten-year-old boy had wound up by himself on a chairlift down from the mountain, as his parents had deemed it too hard to ski in the worsening conditions, but that his chairlift hadn't arrived at the bottom.

The report cut to footage of a crying woman who must have been his mother. " _¡Se suponía que fuera con su hermana!_ " [" _He was supposed to go with his sister!_ "] the woman sobbed, her eyes wild with panic. The billowing gusts of snow raged outside a window behind her. _"Ella dijo que él se enojó y fue solo, pero, ¿dónde está?_ " [" _But she said he got angry and went by himself, where is he?_ "]

The footage cut back to the reporter, still standing in the powerful winds, who explained that the chairlift had malfunctioned, and the resort didn't know where on the lift his chair was, only that it was stuck somewhere between the two stations in 60 mile-per-hour winds. A freak storm had descended on the ski field and it was a total whiteout.

Customers in the coffee shop murmured to each other, eyeing the gusts of snow outside and the repeated footage of the crying mother on the television.

Meg and Bucky looked away from the screen at the same time. Their eyes met, grey-blue and deep brown.

There was a moment of silence.

Bucky sighed. "I'll pack the room," he murmured, sliding out of the booth.

Meg followed him out, and put her hand on his shoulder. "I'll meet you at the rendezvous point."

They strode through the coffee shop and out the doors, into the howling winds. Bucky winced at the cold bite of the air and handed Meg her backpack. "Be careful."

She nodded solemnly, and then Bucky watched her as she strode off into the storm.

 

* * *

 

Maggie had never flown in such strong conditions before, that she could remember. But she'd designed her wings well, and they bore her through the shrieking winds and white snow to the ski resort. It was a white, howling world, with zero visibility. She'd only managed to navigate to the ski resort by turning on her burner phone and using the GPS.

Now, she fought her way through the buffeting winds around the chairlift pylons, peering through her goggles. She'd saved the goggles and her clawed gauntlets from her combat uniform, and she was incredibly grateful she had – without the thermal vision she never would have spotted the boy.

He first appeared as an orange speck amidst the dark blue of the freezing terrain, swinging to and fro on a cold metal chairlift. Maggie let out a breath of relief and gunned her engines, pushing herself down towards the chairlift cable. The wind screamed in her ears, plucking at her clothes and her red scarf, which she hadn't thought to take off. She found herself missing her cowl, because the bite of the air against her exposed cheeks was like a hundred needles pressing into her skin.

Once she had a firm grip on the cable, Maggie scuttled up the line to where the single chairlift was still attached. The chair was swinging back and forth in the wind, jostling the orange shape of the boy.

Maggie switched off her thermal vision, then lowered herself onto the chair. The metal creaked at her weight, but held. Her boots connected with the chair's wooden planks, and she lowered herself into a crouch.

The boy was clinging to the handlebar with all his might, shaking uncontrollably in the freezing temperatures as he was buffeted back and forth. Maggie didn't know how long he'd been here, but he didn't look capable of moving. He barely turned his head to look at her, perched beside him on the swinging chair. He was a small thing, with a bright blue jacket, a yellow helmet and orange ski goggles. He'd had the sense to kick off his skis.

Maggie shuffled across the chair to him, and brought her face to his ear. " _Voy a llevarte de vuelta con tu madre_ ," [" _I'm going to take you back to your mother,_ "] she called, wishing she'd caught the boy's name on the news report.

She wasn't sure if he'd heard her properly, but he started shaking harder and her enhanced ears caught the sound of his sobs, muffled by his jacket and the howling wind.

She wrapped an arm around the boy's middle and lifted, but he was still clinging to the metal handlebar. She didn't want to force him, so she steadied herself by wrapping one wing around the back of the chair, and let go with her other hand to uncurl his gloved fingers, one by one.

Once he'd released the bar, she pulled him out of the seat and into her arms, holding his head against her shoulder. He was shaking against her, and felt dangerously cold.

" _Estarás bien, pequeño_ ," [" _You're going to be alright, little one,_ "] she called, and felt his trembling arms wrap around her neck. " _Estás a salvo ahora._ " [" _You're safe now._ "] With that, she leaped from the swinging chair and pushed her engines to their limits, fighting against the white winds to keep them aloft. The boy screamed in her ear, and tightened his grasp around her neck. Her arms were steady around him as she strained her muscles to bring them safely down the mountain.

There was still zero visibility, so she used her thermal vision to locate the ski resort. She flew over the main building and landed behind a supply shed, glancing around to ensure there were no heat signatures of anyone who might spot her. The landing was rough and she skidded on the icy ground, but the boy was pressed safely against her chest, his heart still beating steadily.

Once she'd regained her feet, Maggie jogged toward the main building of the resort, still clutching the boy.

When she found the back entrance, a heavy fire escape door, she knocked it open with her shoulder and peeked inside – an empty corridor. She set the boy down and noted that he was able to stand on his own. She pulled up her goggles and looked him over – he was still shivering uncontrollably, but it didn't look like he'd injured himself.

She pulled off his goggles and peered into his wide, brown eyes, checking his pupil dilation for a concussion. His lips were purple, but not critically so, and it appeared that his fingers, nose and ears had been covered. She pressed two fingers against his neck and counted his heartbeats.

" _¿Eres un ángel?_ " [" _Are you an angel?_ "]

Maggie froze in her inspection of the boy's health. He was standing on his own two feet, gloved hands pressed under his armpits, staring at Maggie and her wings. She hadn't folded them up completely, and the grey skeleton with its black webbing caked in snow made quite the sight.

"No," she eventually murmured. " _¿Cuál es tu nombre?_ " [" _What's your name?_ "]

He swallowed, still staring at her wings. "Miguel." He wasn't crying any more – she suspected the shock of being rescued by a woman with metal wings had distracted him from the cold and his fear.

"Miguel," she echoed, and put her hand on his shoulder. " _Baja por ese pasillo y gira a la derecha. ¿Puedes hacer eso?_ " [" _Go down that corridor and turn right. Can you do that?_ "] He nodded, and she gave him a smile. " _Has sido valiente, pequeño. Ir._ " [" _You've been brave, little one. Go._ "]

Miguel turned and shuffled down the corridor – his legs shook, but they were strong enough to get him that far. Before he turned right, into the room that Maggie had noted had the most heat signatures, he paused and looked over his shoulder at her. She was crouched by the open door, wings still partly aloft, watching him. She gave him a reassuring nod, and then he was gone.

Maggie stayed long enough to ensure that the rescue operation and news crew in the main room of the resort had found Miguel, and then trudged back out into the storm. The wind battered her body and face, but she barely felt it.

For the first time in her life, there was someone safe with their family because of her. The feeling was warm in her chest. She held it close as she spread her wings and jetted back into the stormy sky, disappearing into the storm.

 

When she landed at the rendezvous point, a rest stop on a highway five hours away, Bucky was waiting for her. He took in her flushed face and trembling hands, and beckoned her into the meagre shelter of the rest stop. He pulled her into a hug, wrapping his warm arm around her and sharing his body heat. Maggie shivered gratefully in his embrace.

"You got him," Bucky murmured, barely a question. He smelled like engine oil and canvas.

"Yeah," she replied through chattering teeth. "He's going to be okay."

Bucky let out a long breath. "You did good, Meg."

They didn't need to speak beyond that. They both knew the plan if one of them was sighted – vanishing from the grid for at least a week and monitoring news footage, with their first priority being to get miles away from the area of the sighting. Maggie had no doubt that the silver sedan parked behind the rest stop was the getaway car Bucky had procured. But they took a few more silent moments together in the sheltered rest stop, Bucky's arms around Maggie as they contemplated the boy that had been returned to his mother.

 

* * *

 

Los Penitentes, Argentina

"Are you sure it was a good idea to let Stark do the talking?" Sam murmured to Steve, watching the billionaire speak to the two police officers at the door to the main ski resort building. He didn't understand what the man was saying, but whatever it was, it exuded arrogance.

"Well unless you can speak Spanish…" Steve replied, eyebrows raised.

Sam rolled his eyes and leaned against the side of the Quinjet. It was a clear, cold day, but he could see the damage from yesterday's storm around the resort – trees had been uprooted and thrown into buildings, cars and street signs were buried in snow, and the chairlift was shut down. Sam shivered in his leather jacket – he should have worn more layers.

To be fair, he hadn't had a lot of warning – J.A.R.V.I.S. had alerted them twelve hours ago to a line on a digital police report about a boy who'd gone missing and then miraculously shown up at the ski resort. In English, the line read:  _Miguel_ _told officers that a 'lady with metal wings' flew him down the mountain._ The report hadn't gone into any further details, as the officers didn't seem to believe the kid's account, but that had been enough to get Stark, Steve and Sam on a Quinjet out of NYC.

Now Stark was trying to sweet-talk their way into an interview with the kid, who was recovering in the lodge. Sam wasn't sure how successful that was going to be, but J.A.R.V.I.S. was also monitoring all travel in and out of the area, and scanning CCTV footage from every town within a 200 mile radius.

Sam's doubts about the billionaire's sweet-talking abilities proved to be unfounded, however, when the police officers waved them into the large pine building. The common area was bustling with people, though thankfully none of them looked up and recognised two of the most recognisable super-heroes in the world walking into the room.

The officers guided them through a set of corridors and into a quieter dining area, where a small family sat around a table. They looked up at the newcomers, and Sam recognised the mom and the kid from the news footage. Both looked significantly warmer and less distressed, though their mouths fell open at the sight of Tony Stark and Captain America.

" _¡Hola!_ " Stark said, whipping off his sunglasses. He strode across the room and took a seat at the table. _"¿Te importa si tenemos una charla?_ " [" _Do you mind if we have a chat?_ "]

He addressed this last part to the kid, Miguel, who nodded with an open mouth. He was bundled up warmly, and Sam recalled from the police reports and news coverage that he'd had a mild case of hypothermia, which was immediately treated on his return to the lodge.

Tony waved Steve and Sam to the table, then turned back to the kid. " _¿Te importa si conversamos solo con tu madre y tú?_ " [" _Do you mind if we talk only to you and your mother?_ "]

Miguel nodded again, and within a minute the rest of the family – and the two officers – had filed out of the room. Sam settled in his chair and greeted the kid and his mom as best as he remembered from high school Spanish. Miguel was a cute kid, with dark hair and bright eyes.

"I'm just going to jump in with questions," Tony told Sam and Steve. "I'll translate his answers, and if you have any questions let me know."

Tony's first question was short, and the kid bit his lip before offering a nervous response.

"He says a lady with metal wings flew him down the mountain, but the policeman said that wasn't real," Tony translated, then switched back into Spanish, obviously encouraging the boy to say what he remembered.. A moment later, he was translating the kid's reply again: "He says he doesn't remember a lot about her, because he was scared and cold, but he remembers that her wings were black and grey and made of metal."

The kid's mom just watched with a starstruck expression.

"He says he was on the chair for a really long time, and he was scared the wind was going to make him fall. The lady with the metal wings told him she was going to get him back to his mom, and she made him let go of the chair. He says that they flew down the mountain, and that was scary too." Tony smiled at that, and made a comment that made the kid laugh.

Then: "The lady took him inside and told him where to go. She said…" Tony's voice roughened, and he cleared his throat, trying to keep his tone light for their young audience. "She said she wasn't an angel." Tony nodded as the kid kept talking, then sat back in his chair. "That's all he remembers about her. He says she was nice. You guys got any questions?"

Sam rubbed his hand across his jaw. He couldn't discount what the kid said about metal wings, but still… it was hard picturing the Wyvern, who'd hunted him through the sky in D.C., as the 'nice lady' this kid described. "Does he remember what colour her eyes were?" If anyone asked him what the Wyvern looked like, the first thing he'd mention would be her wings, and the second thing would be her freaky red goggles.

Tony relayed the question, and then said "huh" at the kid's reply. "He says she was wearing goggles, like his, but when she took them off her eyes were brown."

Sam glanced at Tony's face, and cursed himself for noting that his eyes were brown. Was he really buying this?

Steve cleared his throat. "Any sign of the Winter Soldier?"

Tony asked, but the kid said he hadn't seen any man, especially not one with a metal arm.

The mom appeared to get over some of her shock, and asked Tony a question. He shrugged, giving an answer that sounded dismissive, and the look he shot Steve and Sam told them that the interview was over. They each smiled at the kid and said their clunky thank-you's, then filed out of the resort.

"Are we actually thinking this is a solid lead?" Sam said, once they were in the open air again. Their shoes crunched in the heavy snow. "I mean, D.C. to Argentina's a bit of a jump, and so is going from burning down banks to rescuing kids from malfunctioning chair lifts."

Stark had put his sunglasses back on, and his hands were shoved in his pockets. He seemed busy processing what they had learned, so Steve spoke up.

"I know it's hard to believe, but he described her pretty accurately. Besides, how else did he get down from the chairlift?"

The hope in Steve's voice was infectious, but Sam was the only one here who didn't have a HYDRA assassin as a loved one, so he had to be the voice of reason. "I don't know, Steve-"

"He wasn't suggestible," Tony piped up, as they climbed back into the Quinjet.

"What?"

"When I suggested that the wings might have been white, or when I asked him about a man with a metal arm, he didn't add to his story. He just said that wasn't true. So whatever he remembers, he's not changing the details."

Sam pinched his nose.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Tony called. "What do you have for me?"

"Sir, there are no other images or mentions of a woman with metal wings in the surrounding area, nor of a man with a metal arm. I have, however, found this CCTV footage of a woman matching Miss Stark's general height and body type in the town of Los Andes, fifty-five miles away, recorded forty minutes before the child was recovered."

The screen in the Quinjet's cockpit flickered into life, and the three men rushed toward it. The footage J.A.R.V.I.S. had found wasn't very long – the grainy black and white video showed a woman in a thick jacket and a scarf rushing across the frame, carrying a backpack. She was tall, and despite the poor weather conditions it was clear that she had dark hair, and that she was fast. After playing it over a few times, J.A.R.V.I.S. paused the footage when the woman first entered the frame, and zoomed in on what was visible of her face. She had high cheekbones, dark brows and eyes, and a serious expression.

"Facial match?" breathed Tony.

"Inconclusive, sir, given that there are no photographs of an adult Miss Stark to compare to, and her face is only partially visible."

Tony stared at the woman's serious face framed by dark hair. "You haven't found anything else, J.A.R.V.I.S.? Travel records, police reports, CCTV footage…?"

"I am afraid not, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied in a softer tone.

Tony let out a sharp breath, and climbed into the cockpit to sit in the pilot's seat.

"What now, Tony?" Steve asked, resting one hand against the seat.

Tony laughed tiredly, and Sam heard the  _thunk_ of his head hitting the back of the seat. "Well we haven't got a lot to go on, do we? Just a kid who somehow flew down a mountain and three seconds of footage that  _could be_ her-" Tony fell silent for a few seconds, and Sam just knew he was staring at the still of the woman's face. "Or it could not be." He sighed. "Either of you got any ideas?"

Sam winced at the hopeless tone to Tony's voice, and his heart sank at the forlorn expression on Steve's face.

"We can sweep the surrounding area, at least," Sam suggested. "Check out that town from the CCTV footage, ask around."  
Steve perked up at that. "Sounds like a plan."

 

* * *

 

Nothing ever came of it. All they came away from South America with was the CCTV image of the woman, and the hope that maybe the Wyvern had gone from assassinations to rescues. Sam and J.A.R.V.I.S. widened their search criteria to include vigilante acts. Steve had renewed hope that Barnes might have broken through his brainwashing and remembered his past.

Tony just had more questions to keep him up at night, and a black-and-white video of a woman who might be his sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorryyyyyy.


	25. Chapter 25

October, 2014  
National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile

Maggie squinted at the portrait of  _Liberator Bernardo O'Higgins_ , glancing from the uniformed man in the portrait to the blurb about the artwork in the brochure she'd taken from the front desk. The low murmur of conversation echoed throughout the wide galleries of the museum.

She stared at O'Higgins, and he stared back. She didn't  _get_ it. It was just a picture of a man. She'd read about him, knew he was a Chilean independence leader from two hundred years ago, but that didn't help her to understand the art any better. She wondered if she needed to know  _more_ about the man, or more about art, to understand.

This had been Bucky's idea. He'd said that people living in the world went to art museums, and here they were. Maggie looked back at her brochure, frowning.

"I can hear you thinking," Bucky murmured, materialising beside her. He ran his eyes over the portrait of the independence leader.

"Can you hear  _what_ I'm thinking?"

Bucky smirked and looked at her with an assessing eye. "Not sure. Whatever it is, though, you're thinking way too hard about it."

She sighed. "Probably." She brandished the brochure at him. "I don't  _get_ this. What am I meant to be doing? Do we just… look at the paintings? Why are some people looking at them for so long? Should I have done research before we came here? Bucky, I was standing at that painting-" she pointed to a landscape oil painting on the far wall – "and one woman said that the  _optical suggestions of the facture spatially undermined the exploration of the montage elements_." She lowered her voice, because she was starting to get agitated. "I know what those words mean individually, but I have no idea what she said! Bucky, stop laughing at me!"

He tried to compose his face, but she could see the laughter sparkling in his eyes. He hadn't moved or even opened his mouth to reply – he just watched her get more frustrated.

"Is there something I'm not getting?" Maggie asked, scowling at his amusement.

"No," Bucky said, and his face softened. "Look, just… give me that-" he took the brochure out of her hand, and guided her away from O'Higgins. "You're thinking too much about it. Forget about what that woman said, she's an idiot." Maggie huffed a laugh as he steered her toward another portrait; this one was of a woman in a rich blue gown, turned away from the viewer as she held a letter behind her back.

Bucky planted her in front of the painting. "Look, I'm no art expert, but I know you. Stop thinking so much about what it might mean, stop searching for an explanation, and just… look at it. Approach it kinda like you do with music. You said you don't know why you like one song more than another, you just  _do._  Does that make any sense?"

Maggie bit her lip, and felt her mind start to quiet. It  _did_ make sense – she just hadn't thought that a painting could be like a song. She closed her eyes, quelling the buzz of questions and overthinking, and then opened them anew, considering the painting. The first thing she noticed was that she liked the colours – the soft blue of the woman's dress combined with her pale skin and her intricately painted dark hair. There were shadows and light in the painting, and she noticed her eye being drawn from the woman, to her letter, to the door in the background. Maggie let the colours and textures of the painting wash over her for a minute or so, not thinking particularly hard about it, but letting herself feel.

After a few minutes of silence, Bucky asked: "Well?"

"I like it," she decided, and cocked her head at the painting. "It makes me feel… worried, I guess. But it's good, too." She shrugged.

"There you go," Bucky said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "You're an art critic." He was solid and warm beside her, and she could sense him watching her.

She turned to face him, taking in his thoughtful blue-grey eyes and his small smile as he looked at her. "You're good at this."

He shrugged. "I remember I used to moan about how I didn't get art, until Steve dragged me along to his art classes. I was never much good at it, but it was fun, and I learned that you don't have to listen to the pretentious assholes to enjoy it."

Maggie snorted, and the sound made Bucky's eyes crinkle.

"We were in our art class when we heard about Pearl Harbor," he continued, and his eyes went distant, seeing the memory. Sometimes his memories slipped over him like this, inserting themselves into conversations almost of their own volition. Maggie recognized the nostalgia that came over him, and she knew how he liked to process it.

She smiled at him. "Go on, go write in your notebook." His eyes focused on her. "I'll catch up with you."

With a wry grin, Bucky turned and headed back for the main atrium, where there were seats for artists wanting to sketch the marble sculptures. Maggie watched him walk out, a small smile on her face.

With a sigh, she put her hands on her hips and looked around the gallery with fresh eyes.  _Stop thinking so much._

 

Maggie found that she liked the 'busy' artworks – the ones where she could see the texture on the canvas, brush strokes and dollops of paint. She liked running her eyes over gradients of texture, gloss and color. She wasn't really sure how to decide when she was 'finished' with the museum, but after nearly an hour she wandered back to the atrium to check on Bucky.

It was a beautiful space, the cream walls of the atrium illuminated by light streaming in from the arched glass roof. The open floor on the bottom level was lined with marble statues, and Maggie spotted Bucky on a bench, hunched over his notebook.

She strode across the glossy black floor, still admiring the open space and the intricate carved arches. When she reached Bucky, she brushed her hand against his shoulder.

She should have been paying more attention.

At the light contact Bucky flinched and lashed out, beating her hand aside with his metal arm, and leaped to his feet. The bench groaned at the sudden movement, and the nearby museum patrons looked up in alarm.

Maggie lowered her centre of gravity and tensed her muscles, all thoughts of art and architecture flying from her head. Her whole being was focused on Bucky, who faced her with a heaving chest and wild eyes. His notebook had fallen to the floor. He didn't  _look_ like the Soldier, she noted – his bearing was more frightened than hostile.

" _Bucky_ ," she hissed, conscious of the curious – but not yet suspicious – onlookers.

Bucky flinched, and straightened. His eyes darted around at the other guests, and he crouched to snatch up his notebook. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked across the floor and out of the museum.

_Shit._

Maggie smiled tersely at the remaining onlookers and set out after Bucky. Her wrist registered a sharp ache where he'd hit her, and she flexed it – not broken, but bruised. Her footsteps were loud on the shiny floor.

When she emerged from the museum's wooden doors, she shielded her eyes against the sun and glanced around. There – Bucky's back retreating into the neighboring park. Maggie gritted her teeth and jogged after him, reading his body language. When he heard her approaching he tensed, but she couldn't read any precursors to violence.

"Bucky," she called softly, but he kept walking. "I'm sorry," she breathed, giving him his space as she jogged around him to look at his face. "I'm so sorry, are you alright?" She didn't fully understand what had happened, but the haunted look on his face was familiar.

Bucky shook his head, still breathing hard. "No,  _I'm_ sorry," he said, and his voice was rough. "I shouldn't have – I  _hurt_ you."

Maggie shook her hand at him to demonstrate her wellbeing as they passed under the shadow of a sycamore tree. "I'm  _fine_. Would you – would you  _stop_   _running_?" she puffed, trying to keep up with his speed-walking while simultaneously trying to have a conversation. "Let's talk about this!"

He didn't look happy about it, but he stopped. His shoulders bunched up around his ears, and he wouldn't look her in the eye. He glared at the ground, breathing hard through his nose.

Maggie tried to meet his eyes. "I startled you, and I'm sorry. Are you alright?"

Bucky sighed, and some of the tension eased from his frame. She could tell that he was still angry with himself, but she didn't think he was in any danger of running away any more. "'M alright," he said, and finally met her eyes, searchingly. "I'm sorry, Meg. Did I hurt you?"

She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. "A bit, but it wasn't anything, really. You scared me though, what happened?"

He ran a hand over his face, and she noticed his fingers trembling. "I was writing down memories, and I just…" he frowned. "I was remembering the war, and then Zola, and…"

"And I touched your shoulder," Maggie finished, closing her eyes. His  _metal_ shoulder. She felt her stomach sink.

"It ain't your fault," Bucky murmured. He took a few steps backwards and leaned against a nearby tree. "I'm the one who lost it. I thought I was past… past freaking out, at least in situations where it could get us noticed-"

"We're not just going to get over it, Bucky," she replied, keeping her voice gentle. "It might be you today, it might be me in a week; we're not magically the picture of mental stability." She offered him a wry smile. "But we're  _trying_."

Bucky's breath had slowed. "I'm tired of being dangerous, Meg." His eyes dropped, and the tension returned to his shoulders.

She kept her distance, conscious that his memories of being tortured and experimented on were fresh. "I know. But you didn't hurt me, and really, I should have realised you weren't in a safe headspace. I was distracted." He opened his mouth to protest, but she continued. "If this is the worst it gets, then I'd say it's not that bad. All you did was act to protect yourself, and then you came back."

She could tell he was still skeptical, and she couldn't blame him – with their trigger words and the minefield of trauma in their heads, they weren't ever going to be  _safe._ She sighed. "Just… don't run off, next time."

Bucky sagged, his long hair falling into his eyes. "I'm sorry, Meg."

She smiled tiredly. "And maybe we should get better about asking before we touch each other." They'd been slipping, exchanging shoulder-bumps and casual touches as easy as breathing.

Bucky closed his eyes. "Normally it's fine," he sighed. "Normally it's good. Maybe just…"

"Maybe we'll just ask when we're not one hundred per cent sure it's going to be fine?" she suggested. She trusted him to be one hundred per cent sure, when it came to her.

He nodded. "Deal."

Silence fell over them, Bucky leaning against the looming green tree, Maggie standing on the grass just off the footpath. It was a cool day, with a faint breeze rustling through the tree branches and along the wide lawns. They'd both rugged up warm, to disguise Bucky's arm and to resist the weather. The park was quiet, but now she'd talked down Bucky, Maggie's attention was drawn to shouts and laughter further down the footpath. There were children playing in the park square.

Maggie smiled. "C'mon," she said, looking back at Bucky. He furrowed his brow, but pushed off the tree and joined her on the footpath. She was prepared to give him his space, but after returning his notebook to his backpack, he tentatively bumped his shoulder against hers. She smiled wider, and they walked together down the footpath.

When they reached the main square, they took a moment to watch the children dashing across the lawns, running between the jetting sprinklers. They screamed and laughed when the water sprayed them, while their parents watched.

Maggie held out her hand, palm up. "C'mon."

Bucky looked from her hand, to her face. "What?"

She merely nodded at the spinning sprinklers.

Bucky's frown deepened. "Why?"

She shrugged, keeping her hand aloft. "Looks fun. Don't think so much about it," she teased.

He rolled his eyes, but put his right, flesh hand in hers. She could feel his body heat through the glove, and his fingers tightened around hers.

"On three," she murmured, meeting his grey-blue eyes. She counted down and then they ran, gasping and laughing as the water sprayed their faces and clothes. Bucky swore colorfully, and Maggie remembered the words for later.

The kids laughed at them, and they emerged on the other side of the lawn soaking wet, but Bucky's hand was warm in Maggie's and there was a smile on his face.

 

* * *

 

December, 2014  
San Antonio, Chile

Maggie had her feet kicked up on the coffee table of the safe house, watching the TV while she solved and re-jumbled the Rubik's cube Bucky had given her for her birthday. She could solve it in less than a minute now, but she kept trying to hone her time. She liked the slide of the plastic parts under her nimble fingers, and the color transition from jumbled to whole.

Bucky sat at the kitchen table, jotting down memories in his notebook. From time to time he looked over at Maggie to make a teasing comment about the Rubik's cube, or to ask if she wanted more juice.

They'd more or less settled in San Antonio for the past two months, though occasionally one or both of them would leave the safehouse to run surveillance or check for tails for a few days. They missed each other when they were split up, and she found that sometimes Bucky seemed to be looking at her just to double check that she was there. She didn't complain, as she was doing the same thing.

It was a warm day, and their ceiling fan whirred above their heads. The windows were newspapered over, to prevent outside surveillance of the safehouse, but no one in the poor neighbourhood thought twice about it. She'd gotten used to this house in the comparatively long time they'd spent in it – she knew what kind of creak each floorboard made, and she knew how to get the bathroom door unstuck. It was by no means a palace, just as small and ramshackle as all the other safehouses they'd commandeered, but it was nice being able to settle.

They had two twin mattresses in the bedroom/living area, and usually felt comfortable enough in their instincts to sleep at the same time, rather than in shifts.

Their therapies were going well, though they still had the occasional nightmare or flashback. Lately Bucky had been talking about his family: his mom and dad and three little sisters. Maggie's latest remembrances hadn't been so nice – she remembered being told to kill people over and over, very early on in her time with HYDRA, for no other reason than to make sure she was obedient. She didn't remember how many people had to die for her to become HYDRA's weapon.

Maggie tapped her Adamantium heel idly against the coffee table and turned her focus back to the TV. She usually enjoyed whatever was playing, as she'd never had the luxury of daytime TV with HYDRA, but she had to admit that the news today was a little dry.

She flicked the Rubik's cube this way and that, slotting each coloured cube into place, when a face on the TV caught her eye.

The breath left her chest.

She  _knew_ that face. And not in the fond, nostalgic way that she knew Tony's face, or even her mom and dad's when they showed up on TV. This was a face that she knew from her nightmares, filtered through the sensation of metal clamping around her limbs and lightning coursing through her brain. This was the face that said words like  _divert more power to the central node_  and  _she won't need the mouthguard this time._

Bucky appeared next to her – she must have made a sound, or… no, she'd dropped the Rubik's cube, that must have alerted him. He was speaking, asking what was wrong, but she could only stare at the face on the television. Bucky turned to the screen in time to see the face, just before the news changed stories. Maggie expected him to keep questioning her, to ask  _what do you remember_ ,  _Meg_ , but he didn't. As soon as he saw the face he tensed as well, and his face turned to stone.

Maggie took calming breaths, like she did after a nightmare. After half a minute she had composed herself enough to ask: "You recognise him?" She barely recognised her own voice – it sounded so far away.

Bucky was half-kneeling at her side, eyes locked on the TV even though it was now playing a news story about a local dog walking company. "Yes," he gritted out, and wrenched his eyes from the TV to her face. "You?"

Maggie met his eyes, and saw the same turmoil and pain there that she felt. "You know I do." She took a deep breath. "He's HYDRA. Worked on the chair. On  _us_. And now he's…" her shock suddenly sparked into fury, and she had to clench her jaw to keep from screaming. Fire scorched her insides, licking up from her gut into her throat. Her hands clenched into fists.

"He's what?" Bucky asked. "The news story, I didn't hear…"

She took a long breath through her nose. "He's been given tenure at a university in Santiago," she hissed. "They didn't say his name, but he was shaking hands with the Chancellor." She saw an echo to her fury roll over Bucky's face. "For him to have tenure, he must have been at that university for  _years._ " She could see it in her mind: he would fly out to program and refine the Memory Suppression Machine, and watch the assets scream, and then he would fly back to teach students and publish research.

Bucky's metal arm was whirring and clicking, but he hadn't moved. "Find him," he murmured, and his eyes burned into Maggie's.

It didn't take her long. Her hands shook as they danced over the laptop keyboard, and she had to make a conscious effort not to crack the delicate technology. Three minutes later she had the man's name, address, financial details and his activities for the last twenty years. He'd been taking regular absences from the university for over ten years, under the guise of medical leave for a heart condition. Maggie followed up the medical documents and traced them back to HYDRA: all fabrications. There were incidental references to him in the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump, though no one had connected them to the man himself.

When she'd seen enough, she pulled her hands away from the keyboard and leaned back. Bucky stood over her shoulder, anger radiating off him in waves.

"Vincent Silva," he murmured. She'd left an image of the man on the screen: he was in his early fifties, with thick, dark hair and brown eyes. In the image he wore an academic robe, smiling at the camera as he held up a red folder. The photo came from an article headlined:  _Local Neuroscientist Vincent Silva Publishes Ground-Breaking Research on "Secrets of the Mind"._

Maggie had no doubt that his research was based on HYDRA money and influence. He might have even gotten ideas from the ways in which he'd pulled her and Bucky's minds apart. The thought made her stomach churn.

Maggie and Bucky stared at the photo of the smiling man. A dark, silent energy crackled between them. She didn't know what Bucky remembered, but she was sure his memories were like hers: Silva's face just out of reach, his eyes alight with interest in the machine but his ears deaf to her screams. She remembered him leaning over the linked-up computers, murmuring things like  _interesting_ ; and  _what if we tried this…?_

"What do we do," Bucky said, his voice low and brimming with feeling.

Maggie took a shuddering breath. She felt sick to her stomach, and her mind was reeling.

"We could kill him," she breathed.

They both knew it would be easy. The man was an hour and a half away by car, and they wouldn't even need a weapon. He was a non-combatant, breakable. He'd be nothing against the skill and strength of the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier.

Bucky shifted his weight behind her. "I'm going to touch you."

She inclined her head, silently accepting, and felt his flesh hand settle on her shoulder. His warmth seeped through her shirt and into her skin, and she closed her eyes.

"Meg," he murmured, moving a callused thumb over her shoulder blade. His voice was soft. "Tell me what you want."

Maggie opened her eyes.

 

* * *

 

Santiago, Chile

Vincent Silva's house was worth more than a professor on his income could afford - HYDRA must have been adding to his salary. But despite the money he'd obviously spent on security, it was easy for Bucky and Maggie to slip through a downstairs window and stealth through the darkened corridors. It was all glass sliding doors and rich timber, each floorboard sturdy and each door hinge well-oiled.

The opulence of the house was obvious even in the dark. Maggie stood in the corner of Silva's study, the red light of her goggles switched off, wearing her wings and an approximation of the combat suit she'd disposed of in D.C.: thick black cargo pants, a black hoodie with holes cut in the back for her wings, her clawed gauntlets, and her old combat boots, which had gaps in the soles for her heel spurs to seamlessly extend and retract through.

She held herself still, though the current of anger and resentment flowing through her prickled at her skin and clogged her throat. She'd only seen the news story that morning, but she was sure that the fury had been festering for far longer. Now she had a face, a target.

She could just see the glint of Bucky's arm on the other side of the room, cloaked in shadows. She knew he was wearing thick black clothes as well, and a scarf tied around his lower face.

Vincent Silva wasn't a particularly noisy man, but each sound he made as he shuffled down the corridor toward his study felt deafening to Maggie. Her darkened goggles picked up on his heat signature.

Silva's browser history had showed that he was a late-night researcher, who worked into the small hours of the morning on his upcoming projects. His bank records showed that he bought a lot of premium dark roast coffee, and from the faint clink as he juggled with the door knob, Maggie guessed he'd made himself a cup to tide him through his research.

The door didn't creak when he opened it. He shuffled into the study in the dark, finding his desk by spatial memory, and turned on a lamp once he'd set down his coffee and papers. Maggie's goggles filtered out the sudden burst of light, so she wasn't momentarily blinded.

She drank in the sight of Silva: he looked so  _ordinary_ , in flannel pajamas and with bags under his eyes, but a thrill of fear still went down her Adamantium-reinforced spine at the sight of his face. This was the face that had brought her so much pain – she couldn't prevent her body's instinctive fear, and that just made her angrier. She reached up and turned on her goggles' red glow.

Silva saw Maggie when he looked up to reach for a pen. This was as they'd planned it – she faced the desk, while Bucky was behind Silva, hidden in a shadowy corner by the door.

Silva's reaction was almost comical. As soon as he saw Maggie's red, slitted eyes glowing in the gloom at the edge of the room he flailed, knocking his coffee over with his elbow and careening backwards, a full-body flinch at the sight of the Wyvern.

Maggie didn't move. She drank in Silva's fear, scanning his wide eyes and flapping limbs. His eyes were on her, taking in her slitted goggles, metal wings and stony face.

Bucky slid across the study floor and clamped his metal hand over Silva's shoulder, stilling the man. Silva yelped and tried to get away, but Bucky's hand was inexorable. When Silva tried to twist around to get a look at him, Bucky gripped him harder and made him scream. All the tenured professor could see was the still, silent Wyvern, and the silver metal hand on his shoulder. Maggie's eyes flicked over Bucky, taking in his cold eyes and his flesh hand, clenched by his side.

"Oh my god," Silva wailed in English, his body shaking. "Please, no, please don't kill me!" His voice was high and tremulous.

At this Maggie slid into action, stalking across the study toward the desk. She made sure her clawed gauntlets were visible, hanging loosely at her sides. When she reached the desk, towering over it and Silva, she spoke.

"Admit what you did, Vincent," she said, keeping her voice flat.

The man went, if possible, even paler. There was sweat beading on his forehead, and his breath was coming in gasps.

"Admit, I… I don't know what – you don't-"

With a metallic  _snick_ Maggie flared her wings, spanning the office space and exposing her sharp metal barbs. They gleamed in the lamplight.

Silva screamed, still struggling against Bucky's metal hand. "Alright!" he gasped. "I worked on the Memory Suppression Machine, I worked for HYDRA, what do you-"

Bucky's muscles bunched and he threw the professor sideways, sending both him and the office chair sprawling to the floor.

Silva screamed again and tried to scrabble away on all fours, but Maggie stepped around the table and planted her boot in his side, knocking him onto his back. Another second later and he was frozen on the floor, with Maggie's exposed heel spur hovering just over his chest. She could see the whites of his eyes as he glanced from the metal blade, to her merciless red goggles, to the intimidating sight of the Winter Soldier over her shoulder.

Maggie had done this before, held her heel spur over a target's chest to get them to talk, or just to put some fear into them before she killed them. Whatever her handlers had wanted.

Bucky moved so he stood by Maggie's side, towering over the prone scientist. "Your university thinks you have a heart condition," he murmured, his voice low and deadly through the scarf. "Don't they?"

Silva whimpered, then wailed when Maggie pierced his chest with her heel spur, just enough so that blood welled from the wound and darkened his pajamas. Her heart was singing, thrilled at the sight of his blood, pain and fear. She could still see him in her mind's eye, cool and fascinated as she screamed at the lightning in her mind.

Bucky's arm whirred. "How is your heart now, Professor Silva?"

Silva was sobbing, not even trying to fight back. Maggie could smell his fear, and knew that this was her moment. She twisted her heel slightly and watched him wince.

"You're going to go to the police," she said. "You're going to tell them that you worked for HYDRA, and you're going to tell the same thing to the CIA and anyone else who comes to question you. You're going to tell them everything, or we'll know. You're a smart man, you know what we can do."

Silva's face creased with confusion. "You're… you're not going to kill me?"

"Not yet," muttered Bucky.

Maggie cocked her head. "But we will if you don't do as we say. And we know you've got trouble with honesty, so it's a good thing that some entrepreneurial mind on the Internet has pieced together the information about you in the S.H.I.E.L.D. data dump. You've been worried about that, haven't you Vincent?"

His browser history showed that he had been obsessively combing the websites of people sorting through the data dump, and news about the HYDRA base takedowns. Maggie pulled her heel spur out of Silva's chest, wiped it on his pajamas, and retracted it. She and Bucky loomed over him, the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier.

Silva was still crying. "Why?" he gasped. "Who… who told you to do this?"

Bucky stiffened, and Maggie felt her rage return with fiery gusto, but she contained it.

"If only I could remember," she hissed.

Seconds later, she and Bucky had vanished from the study, leaving Vincent Silva sobbing in his own sweat and blood, with the murderous voices of the two former assets echoing in his ears. After taking a few minutes to cry and wallow in self-pity, he got dressed, set his study to rights, and then walked to his local police station.

 

* * *

 

Bucky and Maggie watched Silva walk into the station from the rooftop on the other side of the street. They'd made sure the officers on duty that night had no connections to HYDRA and weren't on the take. They'd monitored their anonymous information leak to make sure it went to the right people. They hadn't needed to say a word as they followed Silva from his house to the station. Everything was in place.

When Silva disappeared from sight, Maggie let out a shuddering breath. Moments later she was bundled up in Bucky's arms, clinging to him as if she might float away or burst into flames if she didn't. His long hair tickled her ear, and she felt his breath brush her shoulder. They were both shaky and emotional, for so many reasons, but having his arms around her made Maggie feel marginally safer, more stable, less likely to burst into the police station and put her heel spur through Silva's pathetic face.

Bucky's metal arm made a faint  _clink_ against her left wing, and they both chuckled. The laughter eased some of the tension, and they spoke to each other for the first time since they'd broken into Silva's house.

"You didn't tell him not to tell the police about us," Bucky murmured, and the side of his head brushed against hers. One of the good things about the super soldier serum was that it kept their metabolisms running hot, so when they hugged Maggie felt impossibly, blissfully warm.

"It was very heavily implied," she murmured, with a half-smile. "Besides, I don't care. He's… he's nothing, now."

Bucky hummed and pulled back, putting his hands on her arms as his eyes flicked over her face. His eyes softened.

"What?" Maggie asked, cocking her head.

He gave her a sad smile. "I'm glad you chose this."

She sighed. "Me too. I think. I keep thinking about who I was before, about what  _that_ Maggie might have been like, what she would have done in this situation. But I don't know," she shrugged, and looked down at her feet. "The girl I was… everyone kept telling me about my  _potential_ , but then HYDRA came and just… just  _wrecked_ it. Maybe it doesn't matter what I used to be like."

Bucky's hands tightened on her arms and he ducked his head in an attempt to look into her eyes, but she resolutely avoided it. "Meg. HYDRA are definitely a bunch of assholes-" that startled a laugh out of her "- but you're not wrecked. You're incredible."

Maggie smiled, and met his eyes. He was wearing that look like it was the first time he'd ever seen her. There was a faint, crooked smile playing at his lips, and his hair fell around his glinting grey-blue eyes. His fingers were warm and gentle on her arms, and Maggie was torn between wanting to collapse into an exhausted puddle on the ground, and wanting to throw herself back into his arms.

She settled for rolling her shoulders and sighing. "You're not too bad yourself," she said. She'd seen the Soldier in his eyes tonight, and knew that wasn't an easy thing for him to do. Maggie wondered if he really would have preferred to kill Silva, but they'd already discussed it, and she sensed the same tired relief in him that she felt now.

"You're right, though," she said. "We don't know what he'll say. We'd better go."

Bucky nodded, and let go of her. "Are you ready?" he asked, softly.

Maggie flexed her fingers, still in the clawed gauntlets, and nodded. "Always."

 

* * *

 

December, 2014  
Avengers Tower, New York City

Once again, their weekly meeting about the search for Barnes and Margaret Stark qA filled with dead leads and guesswork. They didn't have anything new, not since the maybe-sighting of the Wyvern in Argentina, and the CCTV still from D.C.

Sam mostly just detailed what leads he'd been following up, and explained why they were all useless.

"I gotta say," Sam eventually said, in his therapist-voice. "When it's this hard to find someone, that's usually a sign that they don't want to be found."

Tony huffed. "Yeah, but that isn't going to stop me from finding her. Them. Whatever."

Sam nodded, sighing, and shuffled his papers. "Just making sure you're aware." He knew that neither of the men at the table were going to stop until they had their loved ones in front of them, so there wasn't much point in discouraging them. "How did that thing in Chile go?"

Steve and Natasha had recently flown down to Santiago to question a HYDRA scientist who'd been exposed by a freelance Internet group analysing the S.H.I.E.L.D. dump, and had turned himself in. Natasha had been suspicious about the convenience of it all, and the scientist's cooperation.

Steve straightened in his chair. "It turns out Silva worked on the Memory Suppression Machine, among other things," he said, eyes flicking toward Tony. Tony, who apparently already knew this, kept his feet on the table and started scrolling through his phone. Sam wasn't fooled, he could see the muscle jumping in the billionaire's jaw. "He helped to refine the process, and helped HYDRA with other forms of cognitive control. We asked if he worked with the Wyvern or the Winter Soldier, and he said he didn't know who they were, but Nat thinks he was lying." Steve sighed. "I don't suppose he could tell us much that the files haven't, though. It's not really a lead, but you're welcome to talk to him if you want."

Sam cocked an eyebrow and looked to the image of Silva that J.A.R.V.I.S. had projected on the glossy table. "What an asshole."

He knew that if the Black Widow hadn't been able to convince the scientist to talk about which HYDRA assets he did or did not work with, he sure as hell wasn't going to have a hope. "What did Natasha say about the Internet group?"

Tony pulled his feet off the table. "She looked into it, with J.A.R.V.I.S.'s help, but wherever the information came from, whoever it was, they wanted to stay anonymous and they knew how to do it. Seems we might have an ally."

"Or HYDRA's got an enemy," Steve countered.

Tony shrugged. "Potato, tomato."

Sam rolled his eyes. " _Anyway_ , are we getting any closer with that rumoured Japanese base?"

 

* * *

 

Six thousand miles away, Bucky and Maggie settled into their new roles as stowaways on a cruise liner bound across the Pacific Ocean.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggle with art. I pulled the 'overheard critique' from the Pixmaven website "The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator". http://www.pixmaven.com/phrase_generator.html Check it out, it's pure gold.
> 
> The painting Maggie and Bucky look at is called The Love Letter (or Carta de Amor), by Pedro Lira.
> 
> I couldn't really squeeze this into the story, but if you're curious, Bucky and Maggie spend Christmas aboard the cruise liner. They obviously didn't have time to buy each other presents before stowing away, so they give each other what they can – Maggie steals a bottle of fancy wine from a ship restaurant, and Bucky gets them prime seats to see the ship's fireworks. It's Maggie's first Christmas since 1990, the year before she was kidnapped (as it was eight days before Christmas when the Winter Soldier took her to HYDRA), and Bucky's first Christmas since 1944.


	26. Chapter 26

January, 2015  
Gladstone, Australia

Bucky was sweating. He thought he'd been getting used to the humid heat in South America, but the way the sun here beat down on the back of his neck was exhausting. His long-sleeve shirt and gloves made it worse, but he couldn't take them off unless he felt like broadcasting his metal arm and its red star to the world at large. So he soaked in the air conditioning in the cinema foyer they'd just walked in to, closing his eyes and sighing.

"Bucky, what the hell do these letters mean?"

He cracked one eye open and looked over at Meg. She looked comfortable in her yellow sundress, though she couldn't wear flip-flops as that risked someone seeing the Adamantium slots in her heels. At the moment she was standing with her hands on her hips, frowning at the list of currently-showing films.

Bucky smiled. "You forget how to read?"

She glared at him, the half-smiling scowl she always gave him when she was getting frustrated at something she didn't understand, but liked his teasing. "Come on," she huffed, and gestured at the board. "You're the one who's been to see a film before-"

"Seventy years ago-"

"And that makes you the expert!"

Bucky smirked once more, for good measure, then looked up at the board. They'd kept their voices low, so to the teenager at the desk and the small family on the other side of the foyer they appeared to be any normal couple deciding on a movie to see.

This had been Meg's idea – he'd mentioned going to the cinema back in Brooklyn, and she wanted to try it. She didn't remember going, as a child.

Bucky scanned the showing movies, and soon realised the problem: beside each movie was a series of letters: most of them read  _PG_ , though others had  _M, G_ ,  _MA15+_ , and one had  _R._ He frowned. "I have… no idea." His local Brooklyn theatre hadn't had anything like that. Maybe it was an Australian thing? He glanced back at Meg and saw her smiling. "What?"

She shook her head and pulled out her latest burner phone. "We're both hopeless, that's all," she smiled, as she looked up  _movie theatre pg, m, g, ma15+, R_.

Bucky watched her as she figured out their latest stumbling block, her brows furrowed and her face serious as she absorbed herself in reading. Her dark hair fell around her face, curling in the heat. Bucky smiled at the glint of curiosity in her eyes.

His memories of her as the blank-faced, lethally efficient Wyvern seemed hazy and false, now that he knew the sound of her laugh, had seen her moved to tears by music, knew how she liked her coffee, and had witnessed her many small kindnesses. He couldn't picture the woman he knew killing and burning and mindlessly obeying, though of course he knew that she had done all of that, as had he.

But Meg wasn't divided into two parts – Bucky saw the Wyvern in her when she was hungrily searching for knowledge, like now, or in her fevered eyes in the wake of a nightmare, and even when she comforted him after his own nightmares, righteous and fierce. He'd seen the Wyvern when they broke into Vincent Silva's home, and had felt the Soldier's icy stillness slip over his own mind. Her fury, once it was ignited, flooded her eyes and face, and seemed to crackle in the air around her.

But the Wyvern, the child she'd been, the woman she'd become… there was no point trying to draw lines between the three. Meg was  _Meg,_ with her Stark thirst for knowledge, her frank honesty, and her impossibly open heart. She was the woman who had chosen to let Silva live, who had said  _he's nothing, now._ She was the one who never failed to blow him away, the one who he–

Meg looked up. "They're content classifications," she said. "G is for General Audiences, and it goes up to R, which is for people 18 years and over. The classifications are different in different countries, and weren't introduced until the sixties, which explains why you're confused." She saw the way he was looking at her, with his dopey smile, and narrowed her eyes. "What?"

He shook his head. He couldn't let himself forget what he was to Meg – her mission and her friend, yes, but also her kidnapper and her parents' murderer. He couldn't let himself forget, even if she had forgiven him. Meg was healing from having her life, mind and body taken away from her, she didn't need him complicating things by… well, it didn't matter. Their fates were bound together – for now – by necessity, and by her miraculous decision for them to be friends.

To want more than that… he shook his head again, and looked up at the list of films to draw the attention away from his own rapidly darkening thoughts. There was no point dwelling on it, so he wouldn't, despite the fact that proximity and time only made him notice Meg more.

Meg sensed his light-hearted mood fade away, and cocked her head. "I think we'd better watch a  _G_ movie," she decided, and led him to the ticket kiosk.

They ended up buying tickets to a re-showing of a kid's movie that came out a few years ago, and Meg leaned into him as they decided on snacks. Bucky studiously ignored the prickle that her warm touch sparked across his skin, and the jump in his heartrate, and ordered the largest bucket of popcorn they had. Meg bought an ice cream.

When the lights in the movie theatre dimmed and the music swelled, Bucky smiled back at Meg in the gloom. Her excitement was palpable. Here they were, in the future, learning to be people. Meg needed her friend, and that's what he'd be.

 

The movie ended up being about a dog who thought he had super powers, trying to save his kid owner. The animation blew Bucky and Meg away, as it was better than anything they remembered from either of their childhoods. Towards the end, Bucky heard a sniffling noise and turned to see tears running down Meg's face as she watched the animated kid hug the dog.

She noticed him looking and shot him an  _I can't help it_  expression. He handed her the napkin from her ice cream, and wasn't quite strong enough to stop himself from putting his arm around her shoulders for the last five minutes of the movie.

He knew the man he used to be might have done such a thing with his dates for more underhanded purposes, but he resolutely told himself that this was just to comfort Meg, who liked physical comfort when she was upset. It had nothing to do with how he enjoyed the movie more with her skin against his, or how good she smelled; some mix of her flowery dollar-store shampoo and a hint of metal.

 

After the movie they braved the sweltering heat outside once more and walked down the road towards the beach, gushing back and forth about how different the movie was from the kids' movies they remembered. Bucky had a bit more culture shock than Meg, but they'd both been pleasantly surprised.

"I don't remember movies being so  _loud_ ," Bucky mused, his metal hand shoved in his pocket as they strode down the sidewalk.

Meg's lips quirked, and he knew she was about to tease him. "Does your hearing aid need adjustment?" she asked, and neatly dodged the shoulder check he aimed at her.

"You ought to respect your elders," he huffed when she returned to the sidewalk.

"Why?"

"Because…" his mouth opened and closed. "I don't know, because my ma always told me to. Maybe because they're wiser?"

Meg laughed. "You could live another ninety seven years and still only hope to be as wise as me."

"That's probably true," he reflected, nodding.

"Oh come on, it's not fun when you agree with me."

"You fixing for a fight, Stark?"

"You couldn't take me, Barnes."

Bucky opened his mouth to respond when there was a loud bark, and a small dog collided with his shins. "Oof. Hello, there." It was a beagle, his ears flopping as he barked excitedly at Bucky, tail windmilling. Bucky crouched and let the dog lick his flesh hand. "Hey there, buddy. Where's your owner?" He looked up and spotted a harried-looking woman on the other side of the street, jogging toward them.

He grinned, and glanced up at Meg as the dog slobbered all over his hand. Meg was staring at him and the dog, her eyes wide and her brow furrowed.

"What's wrong?"

Meg wrinkled her nose. "Why are you letting it do that?"

Bucky looked back at the excited beagle, and sighed. They'd just watched a whole film about a dog, but he realised that Meg hadn't had a lot of experience with animals, or pets.

"He's friendly," he explained, and rubbed the dog's ears. "C'mon, pat him."

Meg looked sceptical, but crouched beside Bucky and reached toward the beagle. Sensing another stranger to lavish his affection on, the dog scrambled across the pavement towards her and threw his forelegs onto her bent knee, tongue lolling out of his mouth. Meg pulled her hand back and looked to Bucky, eyes wide.

"He won't bite," Bucky laughed, and took her hand with his gloved metal one. Gently, he pulled her fingers toward the beagle's head, and showed her how to scratch behind his ears.

At that moment the dog's owner reached them, gasping. "I'm so sorry!" she said. "He's usually so good, but the second he sees someone he thinks might pat him, he's off!"

Meg was getting the hang of scratching the dog's head, seemingly torn between frowning and smiling, so Bucky pulled his hand away. "That's alright, what's his name?"

"Spencer," the woman puffed, and then groaned when Spencer jumped up on Meg's chest, trying to lick her chin. Meg laughed, fending off his efforts with one hand while trying to stay balanced with the other.

"Spencer, we talked about this!" sighed his owner. "People don't want to kiss you! I'm sorry, I hope you don't mind."

Meg succeeded in gently pushing Spencer back to the ground, then glanced up at his owner. "It's alright. He smells  _terrible,_ though."

Bucky winced: though she tried her best, Meg still tended to be a bit blunt when interacting with strangers. She was blunt with him too, but he didn't mind. He supposed there was a difference between learning social interaction by rote, and learning from practice.

But the dog owner just laughed and said: "yeah, it's straight into the bath for him when we get home. C'mon, Spence!"

The drooling, huffing dog went back to Bucky for another pat, and he worked his fingers under its collar, like his Brooklyn neighbours' dog had always enjoyed. Spencer's eyes near rolled back in his head.

"We'd better be going too," Bucky smiled, giving the dog one last pat before he stood up. "Let's go, doll," he said, and offered his hand to Meg. She took it, though she shot him a quizzical look.

"Alright, bye! Thanks for putting up with Spencer!"

They waved goodbye, and Bucky and Meg continued walking down the street, hand-in-hand. This was their default for whenever they interacted with strangers now, some kind of hybrid between maintaining cover, concealing his metal hand, and seeking reassurance in each other.

Once they were a few hundred feet away, Meg looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Doll?"

Bucky winced. "Sorry, it just slipped out."

"But it's…" Meg frowned. "You didn't mean to call me an  _actual_ doll, did you?"

"No, it ain't that. It's just something that, uh, a guy might call his girl. Or at least it was back in my day."

Meg thought about that for a while, her brow furrowed and her eyes alight in an expression that was familiar to him by now. After a minute or so she'd evidently thought it through, because she said "Huh," and went back to admiring their surroundings. They'd reached the beach, and the sun seemed to grow even hotter on the back of Bucky's neck.

The yellow sand gave way to sparkling blue water, filled with splashing swimmers and laughing children. Colourful towels and umbrellas dotted the beach.

Meg sighed, and then took a deep breath of the sea air. "I'd like to go swimming sometime," she mused.

Bucky was watching the horizon, where glittering ocean met hazy blue sky. "Did you ever swim, before?"

She thought about it. "I must have. You?"

"Yeah." The memories were steeped in salt water, warm sun, and sand on his skin. "We'll go swimming one day, then," he decided, though he knew there'd be all kinds of logistics necessary to hide his arm and her metal moorings. The sensors in his metal hand registered Meg's grip tightening slightly on him. "We've got time."

 

* * *

 

January, 2015  
Mackay, Australia

Nothing was particularly special about the day. Maggie woke up on a threadbare mattress across the room from Bucky, as usual, and they got dressed and brushed their teeth. For breakfast they walked down to a café that they'd seen the day before. Lately Maggie had been learning about botany, as it was a branch of science that she hadn't had the chance to study when she was with HYDRA, so she regaled Bucky with plant classifications on the walk there.

There was nothing particularly special about the day, which was why it was particularly shocking when Maggie came to a sudden realization.

She and Bucky were sitting across from each other at the café table, sipping their coffees. Bucky had just laughed at something she'd said, his eyes crinkling and his teeth flashing, shaking his head to himself.

And Maggie thought:  _Oh._

Because she had just realised that Bucky Barnes was attractive. It wasn't a concept that she'd considered properly before, but this would explain the churning feeling she got in her gut whenever he laughed, or smiled at her with his grey-blue eyes glinting. This would explain a  _lot_.

Maggie eyed Bucky with an analytical gaze, taking in his symmetrical features, his level brow, the stubble on his defined jaw and his long, dark hair. From what she knew about desirable physical traits, he was objectively handsome. He was tall, and she knew how muscled his arms and chest were.

All of this hit her in a rush, and she had to bring her coffee back to her lips to hide her pole-axed expression. But there was more. Smaller things, like the crinkles on the sides of his eyes, and the way he had tucked his hair behind his ears – she realized these were endearing to her. There was a burn of pleasure in her stomach because she had made him laugh.

Maggie leaned back in her chair and let out a long breath. Bucky realised something was up, and quirked his eyebrow at her. She even liked that.

"You remember something?" he asked, taking in her wide eyes and stunned expression.

"No," she eventually said, and took another sip from her coffee. "Just thinking about something."

He seemed to accept that, and went back to his own coffee. Maggie continued pondering her epiphany, and found it harder and harder to draw her eyes away from the man who had inspired it.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days, Maggie threw herself into a frenzy of research. She read up extensively on the chemistry of attraction, romantic bonds, and modern relationships. The more she read, the more Maggie wondered how it had taken so long for her to notice Bucky in that way. She supposed that she was still recovering mentally and emotionally from her years with HYDRA, and her brain just hadn't had space for it.

But it certainly did now. It seemed whenever she looked at Bucky she would feel that tingling, almost sickening sensation in her gut. She couldn't help  _noticing_ him – the serious look on his face as he intently read a children's book, the roll of his shoulders as he walked, the way the corners of his eyes rose when he smiled at her. She knew if she'd ever felt this way under HYDRA she'd have dismissed it as a malfunction: heart pounding, palms sweating, breath coming fast.

She knew it was the result of monamines, dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin flooding her system, but the knowledge didn't help when her brain seemed to short out at the sight of Bucky, hair wet from his shower, grinning at her as he sprawled across the couch. She liked the way he could make himself comfortable anywhere he was, if he only felt at ease – it was a marked difference from his rigid, alert stance when they were on the move, or wary of being surveilled.

 

The day after her revelation, Bucky came back from the grocery store and looked over at her, hunched over the computer.

"What're you researching now, Meg?" He asked, and Maggie looked up at him with pink cheeks. "You've got that look about you," he elaborated.

After a long, silent moment, Maggie responded: "… Particle physics."

Bucky noticed the lie, but didn't mention it. She was entitled to her privacy.

 

Maggie realised that the warm, prickly feelings of attraction had merged with her sheer fondness for Bucky. It had been a full year since they'd broken away from HYDRA, and Maggie still had her breath taken away by how resilient Bucky was, fighting for memories of his past and re-learning how to be a person. He'd been strong, in so many ways, and she knew that she wouldn't have made it so far without him. More than that, he was endlessly thoughtful, and  _funny._ She hadn't laughed a lot in her lifetime, but she now knew the delightful pain of laughing until her sides hurt thanks to Bucky.

Maggie was hopelessly, helplessly, tangled up in emotions. She found it alarming that it seemed to have crept up on her without her knowledge, but there was nothing she could do about it now. She didn't think she'd take away the feelings, if she had the choice.

In the space of a few days, Maggie consumed vast amounts of scientific, academic, philosophical and popular media about attraction and relationships, and she still felt that she'd only scraped the very top of the pile. It seemed humankind – people – were  _obsessed_  with these feelings, and she could understand why.

Her research helped to gird herself against the sometimes overwhelming feelings – she read about heartbreak, about how complicated attraction and relationships could get, about the dynamics required for a healthy romantic relationship. The idea that two people could sustain that level of trust, attraction, support, compatibility and affection seemed impossible, overwhelming, but she found evidence of it over and over again. She also found evidence of such relationships failing, for every reason under the sun.

Bucky had mentioned his dates from before he went to war, but they hadn't seemed that serious, or he just hadn't elaborated. He'd been matter-of-fact, often self-deprecating, and Maggie absorbed it just like any of his other memories. For the first time, she wondered if he'd ever been in love.

She tried to recall her parents' relationship, but she hadn't thought to notice such things when she was so young. She didn't recall her parents touching each other very often, though she had the vague sense that there was a level of respect between them. She definitely remembered overhearing a few fights, but from what she could tell, that was normal.

 

After a week of research, Maggie found herself staring at Bucky as he made them dinner in their tiny safehouse kitchen. His grey-blue eyes were focused, but not in the way they were when he was looking down a rifle scope or facing an enemy – there was a softness about his face that made him seem years younger. His hair was falling in his eyes and he kept tucking it behind his ears.

Maggie  _wanted_ , but she couldn't allow herself to act so rashly on feelings that she hadn't experienced before. She didn't even know how she would act, anyway. She was determined to think this through.

She and Bucky were on the run together, though it was easy to forget that when they strolled down the street together, or traded jokes over their kitchen table. Everything she had read about relationships indicated that stability was necessary, and that was something that neither of them had or could expect to have in their future. They were both still very complicated mentally and emotionally, with almost a hundred years worth of trauma and horrific deeds between them to process.

She had also read that pursuing a relationship required a lot of effort, and changed a lot of dynamics in an already existing relationship.

Maggie sighed when she realised where her thoughts were taking her. But, she reminded herself, Bucky had expressed no romantic interest in her, so it was a moot point anyway. It would be selfish of her to put that complicated dynamic shift upon him.

It was a bad idea to act on her feelings, then. Maggie knew this, but the realisation made her feel crushingly disappointed.

Bucky looked up from the stew, and his eyes glinted when they met hers. Maggie's stomach flipped over, though she tried not to let it. She'd been indulging the feelings for a few days, curious and thrilled, but it made no sense to let it continue now that she'd decided there was no future.

But it was one thing to decide, logically, what she was going to do. It was quite another to tell her heart not to race at the sight of Bucky nodding his head along to the music playing on the radio, or the roll of his shoulders as he stirred.

The things she wanted overwhelmed her: his arms around her, his hand in hers, his hair and his eyes and his skin and his mouth. She wanted to run into the kitchen and leap into his arms and never let go, but…

Maggie shook her head and pressed her palms into her cheeks. She wanted things she'd never wanted before, and she didn't know how to stop.

She pulled the laptop back towards herself and googled  _how to stop being attracted to someone._ The first option was putting distance between herself and the 'someone', and she rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to abandon Bucky just because her body was learning how to be a person. She'd work with what she  _could_ do.

Maggie continued in this line of research until dinner was ready. She didn't want to  _get rid_ of the feelings – this was just one more step towards becoming a person. But she needed to find a way to turn them away from the unwitting Bucky, because there was no hope there.

Still, as he teased her through a mouthful of stew and enthusiastically described a memory he'd recalled of fighting a neighborhood bully back in 1931, complete with hand gestures and thick Brooklyn accent, she instantly forgot everything she'd read, and just enjoyed his company.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I brought them to Australia! I figured it might be a nice place for two recovering amnesiac assassins to visit. And keep in mind, y'all, that January in Australia is hot a.f.
> 
> A short one, but a good one, I hope! I hope you guys didn't feel that this happened too suddenly (after twenty five chapters, whoops) or out of the blue. But I couldn't discount the fact that Maggie would just have no idea what being attracted to someone was like, so it takes her a while to cotton on. Bucky is a little more savvy, but he's got his own stuff to work through.
> 
> I hope you're looking forward to "Two Idiots Who Really Like Each Other Pretending They Don't Really Like Each Other, While Also Dealing With Guilt™". That's kind of been the last like five chapters, tbh, but now with more self awareness.
> 
> Please comment, lovely readers! I love hearing from you :)


	27. Chapter 27

January, 2015  
Townsville, Australia

Bucky was flipping through his notebook when he heard the noise: a metallic  _clank_ emanating from the bathroom, followed by a muttered curse and then dead silence. He closed the notebook and got to his feet, running a mental check of the safehouse – he had sightlines on all the windows, and he'd have noticed them being breached. None of Meg's handy devices had picked up on external surveillance. He knew there was a small, frosted-over window in the bathroom, but anyone trying to breach the safehouse would have to smash it to get in.

Clenching his jaw, Bucky padded toward the closed bathroom door and murmured: "Meg?"

There was another clank, another curse. "Yeah?" her voice was muffled. That only made Bucky's hackles rise further, though they had multiple codewords she could have used to indicate that she was in danger.

"What's going on?" he asked, eyes darting around the rest of the safehouse.

There was a long sigh. "I'm kind of… stuck."

"Stuck?"

There was rustling behind the bathroom door, and then he heard her scrabbling at the door knob. Seconds later the door cracked open.

Meg was awkwardly hunched over the doorknob. She had somehow gotten herself tangled up in her shirt, with the back of it pulled over her head, one arm folded uncomfortably under her nose, trapped in its sleeve, and the other sticking under her armpit. The shirt was covering  _most_ of her chest, but Bucky's eyes still darted away – that was a lot of skin, and having that in his head wasn't going to do anyone any favours. In studiously avoiding her bare skin, Bucky noticed the toolbox propped open in the sink, and the scratch on the mirror. Meg blinked at him from behind her trapped arms and mussed-up hair.

"Meg, I…" he shook his head, mouth opening and closing. "What the hell are you doing?"

Her cheeks went pink. "I'm… there's a connection loose in one of my moorings, I was trying to fix it."

He looked from her sheepish expression, to the toolbox, and back to her predicament. "Why didn't you ask me?" he finally asked, aghast.

Meg blushed further. "I don't… I thought maybe… I didn't…"

Bucky brought one hand to his forehead and laughed, shaking his head. "Okay, okay, let me just…" he sidled into the bathroom, chuckling under his breath, and reached up to help Meg untangle herself from her shirt. Once her left arm was free she managed to pull the shirt back down her midriff and tidy her hair, still looking flustered.

"I didn't want you to feel like you had to," she said, crossing her arms and avoiding his eyes. "It's not a hard fix, I thought I could-"

"I'm sure you could," he said, holding up his hands. "But you can always ask, Meg." He watched her until she met his eyes, and then smiled. "Might save you getting stuck in your own clothes."

She scowled at him.

"Come on," he laughed, and made a turning gesture with his hand. "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

Meg scowled at him for another moment longer, then sighed. "Alright. I'll just…" she put down the lid of the toilet and sat on it, swivelling so her back was lit by the window. Once she was settled, she wrapped her arms around her torso, curled her fingers under the back of her shirt and pulled, lifting it just above her two metal moorings.

Bucky crouched behind her and shook his head to focus. He'd seen people's backs before, this was fine. He was fine. "Okay, so what's wrong?"

Meg rolled her shoulders, and he watched the muscles pull and loosen down her back. "I think there's a loose connection in the left mooring, it just needs to be tightened."

He reached around her for the tool box, his forearm brushing her shoulder. "Does it hurt?"

"No, it just feels… kind of numb? Like a pinched nerve, pins and needles."

He tutted. "Okay, what am I looking for?" He ran his eyes over her right mooring, seamlessly lodged in the fair skin of her back, but he was no engineer. Having a problem to look for helped him focus, though, and he managed to mostly avoid noticing the warmth radiating from Meg's skin and the curve of her waist.

Meg hummed. "It should be moving slightly whenever I move, like…" she rolled her shoulders again. "Can you see it?"

He frowned. "I think so, do it again?"

She did, taking a deep breath in and out at the same time, and Bucky saw one of the socket connectors jiggle minutely. "Alright, got it. It needs tightening?" He selected a torque wrench from Meg's tool box.

"That's right."

"This isn't because of anything I did when I took out that kill switch, is it?"

"No, you didn't do any damage then. This just happens sometimes. Side effect of having machine parts in your body, I guess." She shrugged, and Bucky took a steadying breath.

"I'm going to touch you now, that alright?" He wanted to be sure she was ready, as he knew a lot of her nightmares were based on people messing with her back when she couldn't see them.

Meg took a deep breath, and he saw her wipe her palms on her jeans. "Yeah," she whispered.

Bucky set his flesh hand on her warm skin beside the mooring, to steady her, and used the torque wrench with his metal hand. He worked quickly, conscious of Meg's carefully steady breaths and his own distracted state of mind. As he tightened the connector the last few revolutions he had to slide his flesh hand upwards over her warm skin, and Meg shivered.

"Sorry," he muttered, and then pulled his hand and the wrench away. "How does that feel?"

"Hm?"

"Is the connector tight enough?"

"Oh, uh…" she flexed her shoulders and spine, and cocked her head. "Yeah, that's much better." She sighed and lowered her shirt again. "Thank you, Bucky."

"You're welcome." He packed away the tools and stood up, resolutely ignoring the tingling in his palm. "Uh, anything else, while I'm at it?"

Meg stood too, and Bucky noted that her cheeks were still pink. He felt bad for embarrassing her, but who knew how long she'd have stayed stuck before she asked for help. "I think that's it for now," she said, and smiled. "How's the arm?"

He blinked and looked down at his metal arm. He'd gotten so used to it, it was easy to forget that it was a machine, a weapon. It was especially easy to forget when Meg was hunched over it with a precision tool, treating it like a part of him that she could fix, or when she curled her arm around it as they walked. "Uh, it's… fine, I think." He smirked, and then flexed the arm so it was bent backwards, a move that a regular elbow joint would never be able to do. "But I don't know, does this look normal to you?"

Meg rolled her eyes and elbowed him when she squeezed past him out of the bathroom. "Looks about as normal as the rest of you," she shot back, and Bucky smiled in her wake.

 

* * *

 

February, 2015  
Townsville, Australia

Maggie had been doing her very best to 'get over' Bucky, with the help of her research and her sheer determination. She constantly reminded herself why she shouldn't act on her feelings, and why it was important that she and Bucky stay friends. She established clear boundaries for herself, restricting herself from casual touches and maintaining friendly politeness. The encounter in the bathroom, when Bucky had put his hand on her bare skin and said  _you can always ask_ , had just cemented the need for her to maintain her distance. She'd been too emotionally compromised, too wrapped up in his touches and glances.

So Maggie threw herself into her own interests. While Bucky wrote or read, she built things. She designed programs and machines, though she rarely fabricated her designs, and she tinkered with her wings. She repaired things around their safehouse, and fixed their neighbor's car engine. She put more effort into her various therapies, trying out experiences that scared her and thinking through her traumatic memories. She avoided EMDR, because that required Bucky's participation.

If Bucky noticed any change in her behavior, he didn't say anything. He kept his head down and focused on his own therapies and hobbies. But there was a charged air in the safehouse now, as if they were both simultaneously relieved and frustrated at the distance between them. Whenever they brushed past one another, or their fingers touched when they cooked together in the kitchen, sparks crackled along Maggie's skin and she had to swallow past a lump in her throat. She'd realized that their casual teasing and joking had crossed some invisible line and become flirting, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.

She allowed herself to notice other people – walking down the other side of the street, at another table at the café, on the beach. She found herself noticing both men and women, feeling that now-familiar tingling sensation in her lower gut when she noticed the way someone walked, or wore their hair, or the shape of their face. It was new and exciting, but nothing was quite as powerful as the way she felt when she looked at Bucky.

 

One suggestion from the Internet had been to discuss the situation with friends and loved ones, to get perspective. Maggie didn't have many of those, but she realized that dealing with this problem exclusively in her own head was problematic. She recalled what Bucky had said about elderly people being wiser, so she took herself for a walk to the park and sat down beside the nearest old lady she spotted. The woman was soaking up the sun on a park bench.

When Maggie sat down beside her, the woman turned to face her and said: "Hello, dear. Lovely day, isn't it?"

Maggie, who had been too caught up in her own head to notice the day, took a moment to squint around at the sunny park. "… Yes. It is."

"Are you out for a walk?" the woman inquired, folding her hands in her lap. She had glasses with thin gold frames, and a cloud of white hair.

Maggie took a deep breath. Small talk – she could do this. "I am. And yourself?"

"Oh I don't do much walking these days, but coming down here is better than rattling around at home."

That sparked a polite, friendly conversation between Maggie and the old woman – Beatrice – in which they discussed the weather, the difficulties of finding fresh fruit, Beatrice's family, and something that had happened with a local politician recently. Maggie found herself slipping into the conversation quite easily – she was naturally curious, and the opportunity to learn more about normal people was fascinating.

Eventually, the conversation steered toward Maggie, and what she was doing with her life. "I'm travelling at the moment," she hedged. "I'm travelling with this man, who's my friend, but I need to stay friends with him and I'm having trouble with that. What advice do you have?"

Beatrice's eyes glinted. "I must say, it's been a while since anyone has come to me for relationship advice."

Maggie smiled. "That seems like a waste of valuable knowledge."

"Ah, well. Just so we're clear, you're having trouble with things getting a little  _too_ friendly, and not the other way around?"

"Yes, that's the problem."

"And you don't want to be with him?" Beatrice rubbed her papery hands together.

Maggie opened and closed her mouth, which made Beatrice laugh. "Oh dear," she chuckled. "Are you sure you can't be with him? Nothing worse than regrets, sweetheart, and I should know."

Maggie bit her lip. "It's not about what I  _want_ ," she eventually said. "It's just… not a good idea. For a lot of reasons."

Beatrice tugged at one of her hoop earrings. "Your heart doesn't care much about  _reasons_ , I'm afraid."

"But hearts don't actually have anything to  _do_ with feelings," Maggie protested. "They're just a muscle. All of this… it's in my head."

Beatrice laughed again. "I see now, you're a thinker. My son's a thinker, but my daughter's more of a  _feeler_. My daughter has to remember to think things through, and not to throw herself head-first into situations. My son, however, has learned that not everything in life makes sense. Sometimes he has to accept that there are things he can't change."

Maggie slumped. "So you're saying it's hopeless?"

"Not at all! But if you're  _sure_ that it's not a good idea for you to be with this man, if you're sure that you're not overthinking and rationalising your fears…" Beatrice leaned back, scrutinising Maggie. "Then go out, have fun. You're young."

Maggie thought about that for a while, but Beatrice didn't seem to mind the silence. After a few moments, she nodded, and they went back to discussing Beatrice's children.

After half an hour, Beatrice got to her feet with a groan. "I've got to get home to feed my birds, lovely, but I hope you work things out with that man of yours. I'm here every other day if you'd like to chat again."

Maggie knew that making such a connection was dangerous, but she was sure there was no harm in coming back to the park another couple of times. "Goodbye, Beatrice. Thank you, and I hope bingo goes well!"

 

When she got back to the safehouse that afternoon, Bucky looked up from his book. "Good walk?"

She shrugged off her backpack. "Good. I, uh…" she bit her lip.

Bucky's lips quirked. "What?"

"I think I'd like to go out tonight. To a… bar. Or something."

"Oh," he folded his newspaper. "Sure. Did you want me to come?"

"If you want," she smiled. "You don't have to, but I know you've done that sort of thing before, and… I'm worried I'd do something wrong." She'd been thinking it over the whole walk back – she supposed she might be able to assimilate by herself, but the idea of going out and enjoying herself, while Bucky stayed at home, seemed strange. And she didn't like the idea of keeping things from him. She could maintain her emotional distance from him and still have fun, she was sure of it.

"Ain't much to it," he grinned. "You don't mind me coming?"

She shook her head. She was going to be very clear with herself – they were going together as friends, as allies. Nothing more.

"Alright. What made you decide this?"

She didn't think that saying  _an old lady at the park called Beatrice told me to_  would go down well, so she shrugged. "It's something that people do."

"And now it's something that  _we're_  going to do," he said. "For the mission?"

Maggie couldn't help but smile at him. "For the mission," she agreed.

 

* * *

 

That night, Maggie and Bucky went to a local dive bar – they wanted to avoid the cameras in higher end establishments, and Bucky said that most of his experience came from rougher places. They ordered drinks, found seats at the bar, and settled in. Maggie was startled by how  _loud_ it was – the music, the conversation, the laughter. She sat and stared, sipping her drink and absorbing the atmosphere. Bucky, sensing that she needed to take a few minutes to adjust, struck up a conversation with their bartender.

Maggie decided she liked the bar. It was slightly overwhelming, but she liked that people came to gather in groups to have a good time. It reeked of stale beer and sweaty bodies, but no one else seemed to mind. She was also curious about the effects of alcohol in social settings – she'd seen evidence of intoxication in her targets before, but had only been looking for weaknesses. She wondered what made people want to get drunk, and what it felt like. She would never know, thanks to the serum.

Bucky ordered them a few rounds of different drinks, and laughed when Maggie made faces at certain kinds of alcohol.

"So is it like you remember?" she eventually asked, when the rising and falling conversations in the bar hit a new peak around 11.

Bucky threw back his whiskey and scanned the room, considering. "Not quite. The clothes are different, people act kinda different…" he cocked his head. "But it's still nice, y'know?"

Maggie swung her legs back and forth as she sat on the stool. "Yeah. More dancing back in your day though, right?"

Bucky rolled his eyes and looked at the dance floor in the corner of the bar, where three middle-aged-men hopped up and down to the pop song playing through the tinny speakers. "I don't think this is that kind of bar."

"We could try to find one?" As soon as the words left her mouth, Maggie nearly kicked herself. What was she doing? She was here to see the social scene, not to find ways to make things more complicated with Bucky.

He shrugged. "Alright. You finished your drink?"

Maggie looked at her half-full cider, sighed, and chugged the whole thing. "Yes," she said when she was done, wiping her mouth.

"Damn, Meg," Bucky laughed, shaking his head as he got off his stool. "You don't muck around."

She hopped off her stool and grimaced. "I don't know if I like cider."

"I don't think it's meant to be consumed quite so quickly," Bucky laughed again, holding the door of the bar open for her. It was significantly cooler now, and she wrapped her arms around herself.

"So I don't think they have dance halls anymore," Bucky said as they stepped out onto the street, and looked around, scratching his head. Men and women in party clothes strolled up and down the street, laughing and stumbling on the sidewalk. Maggie smiled at the sight of one man being half-dragged between his friends, singing loudly. She looked up and down the lines of buildings and spotted a sign with a neon dancing lady.

"How about that one?"

Bucky took one look at the building she'd pointed out and started laughing again.

"What?" she asked, frowning at him and at the building. "It says dancers!"

He tried to stifle his laughter, but didn't quite manage it. "I don't think that's the sort of place we're looking for, Meg."

"Why?"

"Uh, I don't think people go there to dance."

"Then why would they go there? And why does it say dancers?"

As they walked down the street, Bucky explained the concept of a gentleman's club.

"Well that doesn't sound too bad," Maggie eventually decided. "It's just a business. Did you ever go to any?"

She noted, with fascination, that Bucky was  _embarrassed._ He ducked his head, hiding his face in his hair, and wouldn't meet her eye. "You did!" she crowed. "Why are you blushing?"

Bucky threw his hands up. "I don't know, I guess they're not usually seen as very uh, stand-up establishments. They were kinda seedy back in my day."

"You still went, though," she teased, laughing as his cheeks darkened.

"Only a couple of times!" he protested. "Once with Steve in New York, but we were only there for five minutes before he had an asthma attack and we had to leave."

"Oh my god," Maggie breathed, grinning from ear to ear. "And the second time?"

"In the war, with the Commandos. We stayed… longer, that time."

Maggie cackled. "I bet you did, Steve didn't have asthma then. Whose idea was it to go?"

Bucky cast his eyes skyward, as if hoping for rescue. "It was Dugan's!" He looked back down and spotted a building with blue lights around the door and a bouncer out the front. "C'mon, let's go in there, they've got music." He put his hand on her elbow and steered her across the street.

"You're changing the subject," Maggie laughed, but didn't push further. She'd never seen him so embarrassed before, and she thoroughly enjoyed his flustered expression.

She and Bucky presented their fabricated IDs at the door, and then stepped into a room that was significantly darker than the dive bar had been. The first thing Maggie noticed was the music – the bass was heavy, pounding through the air and rattling the windows, thudding in her chest. There was no conversation to be had here, the music overrode it all. There was a bar near the door, but the rest of the space was filled with a sea of people, jumping and spinning with the music, waving their hands and dancing with each other. On the other side of the room was a booth with two men wearing backwards-facing caps, nodding their heads along to the music and twisting controls on the desk before them.

Maggie's mouth fell open. She'd never been  _anywhere_  like this, save for a few half-remembered missions. The lights were colorful; blues, purples, reds and oranges blinking in and out, illuminating the crowd and then falling into darkness. Strobe lights beamed out from the DJ booth, flickering and arcing. It was disorienting, and impossibly loud, but Maggie didn't want to leave. The music was a physical presence here, pulsing with the lights and the movements of peoples' bodies, overriding speech and thought.

Maggie and Bucky stood side by side inside the club, staring at the moving bodies. Maggie watched as a man and a woman – strangers, surely – slid together in the crowd and wrapped their arms around one another, moving together with the beat.

Suddenly, Bucky's mouth was by her ear: "This definitely ain't like I remember." His breath prickled along her skin, and the low, magnetic fascination in his voice echoed her own swirling thoughts.

Maggie took a shuddering breath, shouted "I'm going to the bathroom!" and fled from Bucky's side, pushing through the press of people. She slammed through the door into the brightly-lit women's bathroom, and pressed her back against the wall.

"What am I doing," she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. She'd just wanted to observe what people did at night, to  _have fun_ , like Beatrice told her to. So far all she'd done was make everything so much more complicated. She couldn't go out there and dance like  _that_  with Bucky, she knew that was too dangerous.

The music was muffled in the bathroom. Once she'd mentally kicked herself enough, she went to the sink and washed her hands, rolling her eyes at herself in the mirror. At that moment, the door banged open and emitted a small group of laughing, gossiping girls.

"… oh my  _god_ , Clara, the way you were dancing with that guy? Girl you can  _move_." The speaker, a tall brunette with a bright pink top that read  _Brains, Beauty, Booty_ laughed breathlessly and then noticed Maggie at the sink. "Oh hi, hun, I love your shirt!"

Maggie blinked and looked down at her shirt, a bright floral tee. "… Thank you," she murmured, and smiled up at the girls. There were five of them, and she noticed that only one of them slid into a cubicle. The rest milled in front of the mirrors, touching up their makeup and moving their hips to the muffled music.

She'd had some practice with polite exchanges of compliments, so she made space for the girls at the sink and then said: "I like your makeup," to the tall brunette. "It's very skilfully done."

The brunette blushed, and the other girls laughed. "She'll be thinking about that for a week," said a shorter redhead. "You don't wear makeup?" she asked.

Maggie touched her bare face. "I… haven't ever really worn makeup. I know how, but I don't have any."

The fifth girl came out of the cubicle and washed her hands. "I've got lippy if you want some?"

The short redhead gasped and clapped her hands. " _Yes,_ let us do your makeup!"

Maggie grinned, and looked around at the girls, with their flushed faces, bright clothes and bubbling laughter. They smelt like vodka and flowery perfume, and their smiles were genuine. "Yeah, alright."

 

Fifteen minutes later Maggie and the girls burst out of the bathroom in a bouncing group, laughing as the music washed over them full-force. Maggie's face was touched up with whatever they'd had in their handbags; eyeliner, red lipstick and some kind of spray that made her skin glowy. The girls headed straight for the dance floor but were cut off by Bucky, who pushed through the crowd toward Maggie with a furrowed brow.

"Are you alright?" he called over the music, eyeing the laughing, inebriated girls. "You were in there a while."

The tall brunette, Sarah, stared at him with wide eyes. Maggie didn't blame her, Bucky looked good even in his jeans and plain blue top. She nodded at him, showing him with her eyes that she was fine.

The girls were kind of gaping at him now, ogling his hair and his jaw and his broad shoulders, so she shouted "this is Bucky!" to them. There was a chorus of shouted "hi!"s and then they were all sweeping onto the dance floor. Maggie followed their lead, jumping up and down with the beat and twisting her arms. She supposed this was the best audience for her first attempt at dancing – drunk, occupied with their own dancing, and in the dark. She and Bucky had formed a kind of circle with the girls, moving with the music.

With her hair flying around her face and surrounded by the smell of spilled drinks and dancing strangers, Maggie made eye contact with Bucky. He looked just as uncertain and bemused as her, though he seemed to relax into the movement a little easier. He winked at her, and she swallowed.

Sarah seized her hands and pulled her into a spin, and Maggie closed her eyes against the strobe lights. She might not be able to get drunk, but she could do this. She could relax.

 

An hour later, Maggie danced by the edge of the crowd with Sarah as Bucky and the other girls went to the bar for a drink. She thought it was strange that the girls didn't appear to need to know anything about them to want to dance with them, but she supposed the alcohol had something to do with that. She'd seen other people in the crowd come and go, dancing a few songs with a complete stranger and then whirling away.

Bucky was always alert, monitoring the crowd and the exits just like Maggie, but he seemed to know how to do this – to ingratiate himself to strangers and move with the music. Maggie had tried  _very_ hard not to watch him dance, but she couldn't help herself sometimes. His movements were restrained, allowing the people around him to move, but he was  _graceful_ , sinuous. She wondered how much of that came from his training as the Soldier, and how much was natural talent. It didn't really matter, when  _all_ of it nearly drove her out of her mind.

Sarah sang along to the current song, rolling her shoulders and hips to the beat. Sarah's hand landed on Maggie's arm, and slid up to her shoulder.

Maggie bit her lip. She'd noticed that Sarah was attracted to her – she'd been trained to read body language by HYDRA and the Red Room, and she'd learned even more with her recent research. Sarah had gravitated toward her throughout the night, and her coy glances and reaching hands could not be mistaken.

Maggie thought about it, as Sarah's left hand came to rest on her waist. Sarah was objectively good-looking, with curly brown hair, a tall athlete's body, and laughing green eyes. Maggie was still getting used to listening to her body, but she was certain she was attracted to Sarah, in that instinctive way she was attracted to some strangers. The warm touch of her hands sent sparks shooting across her skin and into the pit of her stomach.

After taking a minute to consider her options, Maggie cocked her head and asked: "can I kiss you?"

Sarah's pupils dilated. " _Hell_  yes."

Maggie only had a second to realize that she hadn't done any research on  _this_ , before it was happening. She supposed there was something to be said for natural instinct, because her eyes closed at the press of warm lips, and she tilted her head to avoid smashing her nose into Sarah's. The kiss was soft, and startlingly warm, and Maggie gasped when Sarah's tongue teased at the seam of her lips. She surged forwards, encouraging the touch, and her hand slid unconsciously to cup Sarah's cheek. The kiss tasted like vodka cranberries and skin. Sarah's hand was in her hair, and Maggie felt  _good_.

After a few seconds she pulled away, because she didn't know how to breathe. She opened her eyes to Sarah's white grin.

They kept dancing, and Maggie considered the kiss. Objectively it seemed strange that people would want to put their mouths on each other, but subjectively, there had been a natural instinct inside her that had wanted to, had known the basics. Of course, she had no idea if that had been in any way a good kiss.  
"Was that good?" she shouted into Sarah's ear, and the girl laughed.

"You bet your ass," Sarah called back. "You're so hot!"

Perhaps Sarah might not be the best of judges. But she'd seemed to know what she was doing.

Maggie continued to contemplate the kiss, and almost unconsciously her eyes flickered toward Bucky as he turned away from the bar with his hands full of glasses. Sensing her gaze he looked up, and his eyes glinted.

"Oh you've got it bad, don't you?" came Sarah's voice, and Maggie leaned back to look at her.

"What?"

Sarah tipped her head at Bucky as he and the other girls moved through the crowd. "It's alright, beautiful, I don't blame you!"

Maggie grimaced. "I'm working on it. Thank you for the kiss."

Sarah laughed, leaned forward to give her a peck on the lips – which Bucky saw, his eyebrows rising – and twirled away with a wink. "Anytime, beautiful!" she shouted, and liberated one of the drinks from Bucky's hands.

Bucky raised an eyebrow at Maggie, but she merely shrugged and took a drink of her own, slipping back into the rhythm of dancing with the group.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because CONSENT is IMPORTANT and yes I accidentally made Maggie bi because she doesn't have time for anyone's homophobic nonsense, thank you, she's learning how to be a person! As for those of you who might be upset that Bucky isn't Maggie's first kiss, I thought it was important for Maggie to realize herself as a sexual, romantic being outside of any particular relationship – she is her own person, above all else. Also, I don't personally attach a lot of meaning to the whole "first kiss" thing. It's about what each kiss and each person means to you, and in the words of the great Natasha Romanoff, 'everybody needs practice.'
> 
> Hey lovely people, hit kudos, subscribe and comment to let me know what you enjoyed about this chapter, and about the story! I love hearing from you guys :)


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of a past attempted non-con. Also a lil warning for swearing.

February, 2015  
Cairns, Australia

They didn't go out at night again. Maggie had enjoyed herself, but she'd been physically and mentally exhausted the next day, and she wasn't sure she could avoid dancing with Bucky a second time.

They continued travelling as per usual, and though Maggie was still half out of her mind with distraction when it came to Bucky, things settled into a routine again. Life seemed relatively stable.

Until it wasn't.

They were walking down a side street in the summer sun, a careful distance apart, when Maggie looked up and noticed that a man on the other side of the street had a scar on his cheek.

Her body reacted: she flinched and threw herself sideways, rolling onto someone's lawn and springing into a combat stance, ready to defend herself. Her heart was pounding, and harsh breathing filled her ears.

When the move was complete her brain caught up, and she froze. The man on the other side of the street was staring at her, bewildered, and Bucky had called her name.

 _Think_ , came a voice from the back of her mind. Her body was shaking with fear, but she knew it wasn't rational. Her eyes flickered up to the man's scar, and memories slid into place: a soldier with a curved scar under his eye, laughing at her as he said  _Tony Stark is dead._ The same soldier leering at her under bright fluorescent lights, telling her  _come with me, Wyvern._ The  _snap_ of his neck, and the way the ocean bubbled around his limp body.

Maggie put her hand to her mouth, and felt the blood drain from her face.

Bucky was by her side, leading her to a nearby tree. She removed her hand and threw up, with the face of the soldier with the curved scar swimming behind her eyes. Her arms trembled as she vomited, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Bucky was there, metal hand resting on her back and the other holding her hair out of her face. Maggie sobbed, and a full-body shudder ran through her.

"You're going to be okay, Meg," Bucky murmured, over and over. "It's going to be okay, just breathe." He knew she wasn't ready for questions yet.

 

She didn't remember much about the walk back to their safehouse. She didn't know what Bucky said to the man with the scarred face, if he said anything, or if he just steered her silently back home, one arm around her shoulders. She only remembered the feel of his hands on her, and the ringing in her ears.

When the safehouse door closed behind her, tears started welling in her eyes again, making her vision blurry. She staggered to the bathroom, with Bucky's help, and collapsed by the toilet bowl. She'd thrown up her lunch, but her body wasn't done – she retched and sobbed over the toilet for another ten minutes, sick to her very core.

It was hardly the worst thing she'd ever remembered, but something about the memories made her feel cold: perhaps the knowledge of what the soldier had been trying to do that night, or the fact that she'd killed without hesitation, without orders. She hadn't felt anything.

When her body stopped retching, Maggie pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to scrub away the vivid memories. She could see the soldier's pearly white scar, and his dead eyes sinking into the ocean. She could feel his predatory gaze.

A soft  _clink_ broke through her thoughts, and she looked down to see a glass of water by her knees. Bucky was crouched a few feet away, his blue-grey eyes soft and concerned. Maggie let out a shaky sob and picked up the glass.

"Thank you," she croaked. She felt blurry at the edges, as if her thoughts and fears were seeping out into the air around her. The back of her neck prickled with cold sweat.

Bucky's brow furrowed. "What did you remember?"

She shook her head and took a long drink. She knew she had to talk about it, process it, but it was too raw. She felt exhausted down to her very bones, and she thought she might scream if she had to talk about the memories swirling behind her eyes.

"Can I touch you?"

God, she felt so  _cold._ She nodded, fresh tears welling in her eyes, and let out a long rush of air when Bucky wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her into himself, tucking her head under his chin and supporting her weight against his chest. Both of his arms were warm around her, the metal one heated by the sun, and his hands pressed against her back. He sighed, and his breath tickled the back of her head. Maggie closed her eyes and let herself sink into him.

It had been over a year, and her old memories could still reduce her to this – a shivering, vomiting mess. She wondered if she was even  _meant_ to get better, or if this was what she deserved.

Everything Maggie was, everything she knew, was because of HYDRA. HYDRA had been her whole life, and it wasn't going to let her go so easily. She was strong because of them. She'd learned almost everything she knew from them, and they'd given her her wings.

She'd been made into a weapon, and yet now she pretended to be a person.

Maggie tried to turn away from the thoughts, letting Bucky's warm solidness wash over her, but then she remembered that she wasn't supposed to have this. She  _couldn't_ have this, not his touch or his kindness or his support. She didn't deserve it.

With a gasp Maggie pushed herself out of Bucky's arms and scrabbled backwards across the tile floor.

"Meg?" he looked up, blinking, but didn't follow her.

Her chest heaved. "I can't do that," she breathed. She was so confused, her body roiling with emotion. "This isn't… I don't…"

"Meg, what is it? How can I help?"

She  _wanted_ him but she couldn't have him, didn't deserve him. Who had she been fooling, pretending that she could be a person? She shook her head and swallowed. "Don't. Don't help."

Bucky's face creased in confusion. "Meg-"

"I said  _don't_ , Bucky!" she snapped, and instantly regretted the words. Bucky blinked at her sharp tone and then his face fell, his shoulders slumping and his expression shuttering. The angry words echoed in the space between them.

"Okay," he murmured, and got to his feet, watching her carefully. "Okay. I'll just… be out here." He paced backwards out of the bathroom. He left the door open.

Alone, Maggie felt colder than ever. She closed her eyes and tipped her head backwards into the wall. Her confusion was swirling into anger now, at herself, and HYDRA, and even Bucky. She'd been trying to focus on his faults over the past weeks to get some perspective, but she just couldn't do it. She knew him too well. She knew that he was a good man. And she'd just snapped at him because she wanted more from him than she deserved.

She couldn't control herself, couldn't stop herself wanting him, and it would only end in disaster.

Maggie curled into a ball and pressed her face into her hands. She felt shaky and cold, and there was an aching hollow in the pit of her gut.

 

Half an hour later Maggie paced into the main room of the safehouse, where Bucky sat on the couch bouncing his knee. He stood up when she entered, his concerned eyes flicking over her. "Are you okay?"

Maggie took a deep breath. "We need to… not be together, for a little while."

"Was it that guy on the street? Do you recognise him, do we have a tail?"

She shook her head. "It's not that. It's… me, I think. I need… space." She didn't know how to do this, and the way Bucky's face fell kindled a sharp ache behind her ribs.

"Oh," he murmured. "Did you… remember something? About me?" His shoulders drooped, and Maggie's chest ached at the lost look in his eyes.

" _No_ ," she said emphatically. "I just-" she lifted her trembling hands and rubbed her forehead. "I'm just confused. I need some space to work some things out." She could see that he wasn't convinced, and she sighed. "It's not about you." She hoped he wouldn't pick up on the lie.

"Okay," Bucky said. His face closed off, and he offered her a small smile. "Alright. Well, uh, we were about to move anyway, so I guess…" he gestured lamely at their bags by the door.

Maggie squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. If it's what you need, it's what you need."

She opened her eyes to see him give her a small, sad smile. Her heart pounded, making the ache in her chest worse, and she strode past him toward her bag at the door. She noticed he hadn't asked how long she intended for them to be apart.

"Keep your burner phone on," she said, pulling on her backpack and taking a deep breath. She felt like she was seconds away from bursting into tears, or screaming, but she didn't let it show on her face. Once she'd composed herself enough, she turned back to face him. He hadn't moved, still standing in the middle of the room with his arms loose by his sides and his face carefully blank. As always, though, she could read his eyes. She almost changed her mind when she saw the sadness and confusion there.

Bucky took a deep breath. "I'll see you soon, then?" he asked, and opened his arms, silently offering a last hug.

A lump rose in Maggie's throat. Her legs twitched, wanting to run across the room to him, and her arms itched for his touch. Her mind was a whirling mess, but it stilled long enough to produce a single, clear thought:  _You can't have this._

She licked her lips and gritted her teeth. "I'll see you soon," she whispered, then fumbled behind her back for the doorknob. She didn't look at Bucky, too afraid of what she'd see in his face. Seconds later she closed the door behind her and strode down the street, leaving his confused grey-blue eyes behind her.

 

* * *

 

Mount Isa, Australia

Bucky sat cross-legged on the roof of his lonely safehouse, under the night sky. He glared down at his reflection in his exposed metal arm.

It had been three days since Meg left, and he still didn't understand. Over those two days he had done little else but travel and turn over their last interaction in his head.

He'd made his mind up a year ago that if she wanted to leave, he wouldn't try to convince her to stay. But when she'd been standing by the front door, shaky and avoiding his eyes, he'd had the words  _please_ and  _don't go_  on his tongue, choking him.

He already missed her.

Bucky was doing alright by himself, eating enough and keeping up with his therapy, but he  _missed_ her. He kept glancing up from his notebook to share a memory or a thought with her. He missed her meticulous approach to educating herself about anything and everything. He missed her whip-smart teasing and the glint in her dark eyes.

He kept making meals for two.

Bucky had noticed that things had been different with Maggie for a little while now. She was more closed off, not telling him what she was researching, and went on long walks by herself. He hadn't pushed; they both had their own space, their own minds, and she was entitled to her privacy.

Besides, he'd had his own problems, trying to convince himself that he didn't care quite so deeply about her, that he only wanted her friendship. He hadn't had much luck – he was always aware of her when she was in the room, always noticed her eyes and her smile and the way she held herself. His skin lit up whenever they touched. He'd seen her dancing with that woman the other night and had felt a sudden lurch of jealousy – that was an emotion he'd never really been familiar with, and it sat strangely in his gut.

Maggie's absence only made him realise just how much he'd enjoyed being around her, talking with her, making her laugh.

And now he didn't know if he was going to see her again. She'd looked so haunted the last time he saw her; her face pale and drawn and her eyes swimming with confusion. He wondered if that turmoil had been simmering below the surface for a while, and he hadn't noticed.

Bucky groaned and lay back on the roof, staring up at the night sky. He didn't  _understand_.

Normally Meg urged that they talk things through, work them out. But something had changed, and she'd just clammed up and ran.

And he'd let her leave with barely a conversation, so convinced of his own guilt that he was certain she was leaving because of him.

But he knew she'd have said something if she'd changed her mind about forgiving him for her parents' murder, or about any of it. She'd either say something or go for his throat – it wasn't like her to run, to leave a mission unfinished.

Bucky looked up at the stars and thought about it. She'd said she wasn't leaving because of him, but she'd  _lied._  They knew each other too well to be able to lie to each other. He kept going in circles: he was certain that she'd forgiven him, as difficult as that was to comprehend, but he was also certain that she'd left because of something he'd done.

He remembered the way she'd accepted his touch in the bathroom, sinking into his arms like she belonged there, and then how she'd tensed up and pushed away.

A thought occurred to him – an impossible, insane thought – and Bucky sat up. Could it be that…? He brought one hand to his mouth and drummed his fingers against his cheek, eyes darting as he thought.

The Bucky Barnes of seventy years ago was entirely aware of his effect on women, at least until Peggy Carter had put a pin in that bubble. But the Bucky he was now hadn't really thought about it since escaping HYDRA. Dating had been a fun pastime back in Brooklyn, but he was a different man now.

Bucky stilled. He'd been struggling with his ever-more complicated feelings for Meg, but the idea that she might be dealing with a similar struggle…?

Bucky hardly dared to consider it, but once the idea was in his head, it made a lot more sense. The furtive glances, the way she'd become tenser around him, the charged edge to their usually casual teasing.

But why  _him_?

 

* * *

 

Borroloola, Australia

Maggie felt wretched. But that was nothing new, she'd felt that way since she'd left Bucky over a week ago. And she didn't think it was going to get better.

It wasn't that they  _needed_ to be with each other. They were both perfectly capable of surviving on their own, they weren't bound together. But she missed him, missed his grey-blue eyes and his laughter and his low voice.

She was sitting by herself at a café, frowning at the items in front of her: a bottle of extra-sweet iced coffee, her burner phone, and the Rubik's cube Bucky had given her for her birthday. She glared at the condensation on her extra-sweet iced coffee as she contemplated the way she missed Bucky. It was a physical ache, a cold hollow lodged below her diaphragm. Nothing she did could ease it.

For most of the week she'd tried to keep herself busy, dealing with her memories of the scarred soldier and trying to forget how good Bucky's arms felt around her.

But the truth was that she didn't want to forget. That morning, after almost getting hit by a car because she was so lost in her thoughts, she had come to a realization.

Maggie had been a colossal idiot.

Distance wasn't helping. If anything, she wanted Bucky  _more_ now that he wasn't with her. Every time she turned around and he wasn't there, the ache in her chest burned.

Standing on the sidewalk that morning, ignoring the angry shouts of the driver, Maggie had realized that she'd made the rash decision to leave Bucky because of HYDRA. Because she was still defining herself by what they'd made her, still reacting to them.

Anger burned in Maggie's chest, and the soothing chill as she sipped her iced coffee did nothing to temper it. She was so fed up with everything she was and everything she did being because of HYDRA. She was fed up with being confused, and in pain. She was fed up with denying herself.

And the only one she could blame for the way she felt now, was herself.

That was why she picked up her burner phone and called Bucky.

After three rings, he picked up. "Carnation."

"Fairy lights," she replied, and smiled at his staticky breath of relief.

"You alright, Meg?" he asked, and her chest ached.

"Yeah," she murmured. She swirled her finger around the condensation on the tabletop. "I'm sorry, Bucky."

"You don't have to be sorry," he said. Maggie leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, pressing the phone to her ear. His next words were low and soft, like he was right by her side: "But you don't have to run."

She wanted to protest, but she knew exactly what she'd been doing. "I thought it might be easier," she sighed.

"And?"

"Nope."

She was a bit embarrassed when his laugh over the phone brought tears to her eyes. "I miss you," she murmured.

There was a short pause, then: "I miss you too. Where'd you end up?"

"Doesn't matter," she sighed. "I've got an idea."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I, uh… want to have a party."

"A… party? Like with other people?"

"No, just us. I am inviting you to my party. The party's got a theme, too."

"What's the theme?"

"It's called a  _Fuck You, HYDRA_ party."

The loud burst of laughter over the line made her smile, and she felt some of her wretchedness ease away.

"Okay," he eventually said, still laughing. "And what does a  _Fuck You, HYDRA_ party involve?"

"Well it's going to be held in Darwin, in two days, so I hope you're close enough."

"Yeah, I can swing that."

"I'll upload the address to that online dropsite, and broadcast the time on that frequency we agreed on."

"Mhm."

"And before we get there, we each have to learn to do something that HYDRA would absolutely hate us knowing, and show it to the other person. Make sense?"

"Makes sense." She could hear the smile in his voice. Silence fell for a few moments, and Maggie listened to his steady breaths.

Finally, conscious that they'd been on the phone a while, she said: "I'll see you soon, Bucky."

"See you soon, doll."

Her breath hitched, and she hung up, cheeks flaming. She was annoyed at herself for getting so caught up in Bucky in the space of a phone call, but not  _that_ annoyed. She was a person, and she was fallible.

She tapped her phone against her lips for a few minutes, unable to wipe the smile off her face. Two more days.

 

* * *

 

March, 2015  
Darwin, Australia

Two days later, Bucky strode down a street in Darwin, sweating in the humid weather. He'd had to get used to wearing long sleeves and gloves, even in the heat, but he was particularly warm today. In the online message with the location, Meg had also written  _dress up nicely, it's a party!_ in code. So here he was, wearing a navy blue suit jacket and pants in eighty degree weather. It was late afternoon, but it was still hot.

He barely noticed the heat, however. It had been almost two weeks since he'd last seen Meg. It had been two days since the phone call, when she'd sounded so tired, and invited him to her party. He'd heard her voice catch when he called her  _doll._

He saw her first, sitting on a bench outside the café from the online dropsite. She had her back to him, wearing some kind of red dress, but he'd recognise her dark curls and the poised, watchful way she held herself anywhere. Though she had her head propped on her hand, facing the café, Bucky knew she was alert to every movement and sound on the street.

Sure enough, Meg sensed his approach from thirty feet away. He expected her to not react, to wait for his surreptitious approach, but she jumped to her feet and whirled around, hair gleaming in the sun.

Bucky's mouth went dry. Meg was wearing a dress unlike any others she'd worn before – it was a bright cherry red, framing her torso, coming in at the waist and then flaring out, with some kind of black floaty underskirt extending an inch or so below the hemline. She also wore black heels. He'd seen far more scandalous outfits, even back in the 40's, but something about Meg wearing it stopped him in his tracks.

It didn't matter. He only caught a glimpse of her face before she closed the distance between them and threw her arms around his neck. For a second Bucky didn't move, startled by the embrace – they'd been touching less and less over the past month, and this didn't feel like a calculated display of affection designed to keep up a cover. But then the smell of her – dollar store shampoo, something light and flowery, and a metal tang – washed over him, and he sank into her arms. Before he knew it her head was on his shoulder and his arms were wrapped around her, flesh and metal alike picking up her warmth and the soft slide of her dress.

"Fancy seeing you here," he smiled into her sun-warmed hair.

"Small world," Meg agreed, and her grip on him tightened incrementally. She sighed into his shoulder, and he had to hold back a full-body shiver.

After who knows how long, Bucky's brain kicked back into gear.  _This is new,_ he realised. Not just the dress, but the way Meg was allowing herself to enjoy his touch. It wasn't until now, with her arms around his neck and his face in her hair, that Bucky realised she'd been holding herself back for weeks, months maybe. But something had changed.

After a long moment, they released each other and stepped apart. Bucky's eyes flicked over Meg's face, taking her in. She'd sounded exhausted on the phone, but she looked alright now – her head was cocked and her eyes were bright.

He noticed her eyes widen at the sight of him in the suit and white shirt, and allowed a smirk to cross his face. She glanced back up and saw it, and her cheeks coloured slightly.

Bucky filed that away for later.

"You look good," he said, nodding at her vibrant dress. She grinned and looked down, touching the edges of her hemline with her fingertips. The back of the dress covered her wing moorings, but the cut of it showed off her toned muscles and tall frame.

Bucky was still having a little trouble getting past it. It reminded him of when he'd first seen her in civilian clothing, back in D.C. She'd worn red then too, but that had been a sweater. He remembered fully realizing that Meg – or the Wyvern, as he'd thought of her then – wasn't a weapon or an empty shell, but a person. A woman. She'd seemed so much younger, and something about seeing her in something as normal as jeans and a sweater had brought a small piece of himself back.

Of course, back then the sight of her hadn't sent a thrill shooting down his spine, or set his palms sweating. That was fairly new.

"Thank you," she smiled, then nodded at his suit. "You don't look terrible."

His smirk widened. She knew him too well, he knew exactly what he looked like. The suit framed his arms and thighs, and he'd shaved his face and brushed his hair. This might be the most put together he'd been since 1944.

"So," he said, putting his gloved hands in his pockets. "I don't know if I've ever been to a party with just two people before."

It was Meg's turn to smirk. "Well you've never been to a  _Fuck You, HYDRA_  party before." She pitched her voice just low enough that the pedestrians on the sidewalk couldn't hear.

Bucky laughed again at the name. Meg had picked up cursing like she'd picked up most other aspects of being a person, through research and practice, though he suspected that his own vocabulary had had some influence. "I've gotta ask, what made you decide to do this?"

"Seemed like a good excuse to get you in fancy get-up," she said, and Bucky tried not to let her smirk get to him  _too_ much. He narrowly avoided having to tug at his collar. "And…" she continued, biting her lip, "because I'm sick of HYDRA. Tonight marks the last time I'm doing something to spite them. From here on out… it's just living." Her voice softened and her eyes deepened, showing him just how much she'd thought about this.

A rush of affection hit Bucky and he couldn't do anything except smile speechlessly at her, like an idiot.

Meg smiled back, then put her hands on her hips. "Now I don't know what you learned for your half of the party, but my section has kind of a specific venue…"

"What a coincidence, so does mine."

She squinted at him. "I'd be concerned that we chose the same thing, but I  _really_  doubt it. Alright, yours or mine first?"

Bucky shrugged. "It was your idea, how about yours?"

"Alright, come with me." Meg doubled back to the bench to retrieve her backpack, and then led him down the street. It was late in the afternoon on a Friday, and people strolled up and down the sidewalk in clothes much like theirs.

Bucky was content to follow Meg for blocks to wherever she wanted to go, which was why he was startled when she stopped on the nearest street corner and beckoned for him to sit down on the nearby building's steps.

"Uh, Meg?" He glanced around at the cars driving past, and the foot traffic streaming on either side of her. "Are you sure this is where you want to do this?"

"Hush," she laughed, putting her backpack on the ground. She pulled out a black bowler hat, set it on her head and waggled her eyebrows at him.

Bucky stared at her. "What…?"

Still laughing, Meg put the hat on the ground upside-down, then reached into her backpack for three bright, multicoloured, palm-sized balls. She held them in one hand as she straightened, and raised an eyebrow at him.

When he realised what she'd chosen to learn, he threw his head back and laughed out loud. Meg took this as her sign to begin.

She started by juggling the three balls in a continuous circle, her hands nimble and her eyes focused. Bucky had met a few soldiers who could juggle in the war, tossing hats and ammunition cartridges for free drinks, and there'd been a juggler at a travelling vaudeville performance he'd seen in 1932. The movements were familiar to him, but there was something about seeing Meg tossing the brightly coloured balls as she wore that dress, while the pedestrians walking past stared at her, that made him want to laugh and cry at the same time. He settled for propping his chin on his hand and grinning at her, shaking his head. The sun was gleaming in her hair, and he could hear the soft  _thwip_ of the balls as they hit her palms.

A few pedestrians stopped by the steps to watch her, and Meg responded by tossing all three balls high into the air, ducking down to her bag, and pulling out another ball just in time to catch the first three. Now juggling with four balls, she started to get fancy, sidestepping and tossing the balls at different heights to the delight of her audience. More and more people were stopping to watch, and when she hopped into the air and kicked her heels together, while keeping all the balls aloft, there was a collective gasp and she got her first round of applause.

Meg didn't try to hide the grin spreading across her face. She kept juggling, and soon enough she had a full-blown audience; at least twenty people stopped before her on the sidewalk. She hadn't yet dropped a ball.

Bucky had to stand up so his view wasn't obscured, and she winked at him when she spotted his face. He grinned back. Part of him was nervous – this was a lot of attention to be drawing, but he knew that Meg would have thought it through.

"Sir?" Meg called as she juggled, her face open and smiling in the middle of the circle of flying balls. "Yes, you, sir!"

She was nodding at a man in the crowd, who glanced around and then gestured at himself, as if to ask:  _me?_

With a flourish Meg flung the four balls into the air, just long enough for her to point at the man with both hands. "Yes, you!" She caught the balls again, still juggling. "Would you mind having a look in my hat for me?"

The man stumbled forward, blushing, and peered into the black bowler hat. There were already a few coins and notes in there, but he reached in and pulled out yet another juggling ball. Bucky blinked – he hadn't seen her put that in there.

"Great, I knew I'd left that somewhere!" Meg smiled brightly, and her audience chuckled. "Would you mind tossing it to me, sir?" He pulled his arm back and she pretended to flinch. "Whoa now, just a little toss!"

The blushing man gave her a light underarm lob. Meg scooped up the ball, spinning in place with a flare of her red skirt, and the audience whooped as she neatly juggled all five balls. Bucky grinned from ear to ear.

He'd seen videos of her brother, and he'd known Howard, and it was obvious that Meg had inherited the same Stark showmanship. She knew how to enthral a crowd and get people laughing, cheering her along and tossing money in her hat. She wasn't too exaggerated or too shy, just the right amount of charming and funny. They loved her, the quirky woman in a red party dress and heels, juggling like a lifelong carnie.

Bucky was hit by a rush of admiration and affection that threatened to knock him off his feet.

Meg fumbled one of the balls and dropped it, only to kick it back up with one heeled foot, and she winked at the crowd.

After a few more minutes of tricks, showmanship and jokes, she caught all five balls and bowed. Standing in the middle of a sizeable crowd on the footpath, Bucky joined in with the applause. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

"Thank you!" Meg called, offering another flourishing bow. "I've got one last trick." She crouched, dropped her colourful balls and reached into her backpack. Bucky lost sight of her, hidden by the crowd, but he heard her say: "Now I know it's not as many things to juggle, but I hope you'll all agree that three of these are enough."

The crowd gasped and laughed, and when she straightened Bucky's mouth fell open at the sight of her clutching three Rubik's cubes in her hands.

"Sir – yes, you, my good friend, would you and the two ladies next to you mind jumbling these up for me? And be careful with that one, it's my favorite." She looked up and caught Bucky's eye as the strangers jumbled the cubes for her. He didn't know what he looked like – probably struck dumb – but the sight of his face made her smile. She got her cubes back, and held them up to the light.

"Boy, you really messed this one up sir, do you have it out for me?" The crowd laughed again, and she launched into juggling the cubes.

She didn't tell as many jokes this time around. She still spoke to the crowd, but her sheer focus was more obvious now – there was a small furrow between her brows, and she didn't try any fancy tricks. Bucky – and the rest of her audience – could only stare as the tumbling, soaring cubes slowly went from jumbled to whole. After just over ten minutes she threw the cubes in one last loop, grinning, and then held them out for inspection.

They'd all been solved. The crowd burst into applause and cheers, and another shower of coins fell into her hat.

"Thank you!" she called, bowing with the cubes. "You've been a wonderful audience!"

At that the crowd started to clear away, talking amongst themselves and casting a few glances back over their shoulders at Meg. The sidewalk between her and Bucky was still full, so he waited a few moments before walking over. Meg gave away two of the Rubik's cubes to a couple of children who'd been in her audience.

When the crowd dispersed, Bucky strode across the sidewalk and dropped a coin in her half-full hat.

Meg grinned breathlessly at him. For a moment they just looked at each other, smiling stupidly, with Meg's hat, backpack and the pile of juggling balls between them.

Bucky opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then managed: "Meg, that… that was  _incredible._ " Her smile grew, and her cheeks coloured. "Did you really learn all that in two days?"

She shrugged. "Well I could already do the Rubik's cube pretty quickly. Once I figured out the juggling, it was just a… combination. Besides, I'm a fast learner. Fuck HYDRA, am I right?"

"You're right," he grinned, shaking his head. "They really would've hated that. You're not worried about being noticed?"

She shrugged again. "My face isn't really a famous one. And I've got a jammer in my bag in case anyone tried to film me." She shuffled her heels. "You really liked it?"

"I was blown away when you were just juggling  _three_ balls," he exclaimed. "You're amazing."

With another blush, Meg ducked to scoop up her hat. She jingled it at him. "Buy you dinner?"

"Sure," he laughed. "At least we know we've got a way to pay the bills if the whole siphoning-funds-from-HYDRA thing doesn't work out."

She snorted, and he continued: "We can do my thing after dinner, but… I gotta say, mine is  _not_ as good as what you did. I didn't learn something so much as I  _re-learned_ something."

Meg had stuffed everything back into her backpack, glancing fondly at her last Rubik's cube – the one he'd given her for her birthday, he realised. When she was done, she straightened and cocked her head at him.

"You chose it because you think HYDRA would hate it," she said with a shrug. "So I love it already." She slung her backpack over her shoulders, and looped her arm through his flesh arm. That was new, too, and Bucky decided he was going to explore it further. "Dinner?"

"Dinner," he agreed, and they started walking. "So… Meg, I gotta ask you something."

She tensed imperceptibly. "Mhm?"

They walked a few more moments in silence before he smirked and asked: "Can you teach me how to juggle?"

She scoffed and shoved him into a street sign, but it was worth it for the grin on her face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could have made y'all suffer by leaving their separation on a cliffhanger, but I'm not too mean.
> 
> Juggling Rubik's cubes while solving them is a thing! The world record is held by a 13 year old, who solved all three cubes in 5 minutes, 6.61 seconds. I literally screamed when I saw the video.
> 
> The juggling scene was never meant to be so long tbh, but I was having fun. And I know that I'm kind of stretching the imagination with how quickly she learned to juggle, but dexterity, balance and timing would have been a big part of her HYDRA training, so she's just kind of repurposing it for a much more fun motive. And like she said, she's a quick learner.
> 
> What could Bucky's Fuck You, HYDRA skill be?


	29. Chapter 29

Bucky and Maggie found a restaurant a few streets away, a bit fancier than the dives they usually went to eat at, but Maggie argued that a proper  _Fuck You, HYDRA_ party needed a more expensive setting. So they sat across from each other at a table with a clean white tablecloth and a candle on it, and impressed their waiter with their pronunciation of the complicated Italian names. It helped that they both spoke Italian fluently, but they didn't tell him that. The waiter was less impressed when they later paid for dinner with a bowler-hat full of change.

It took Maggie a while to come down from her adrenaline high from the juggling, which Bucky found endlessly amusing. She'd never had so many people looking at her before, at least when she wasn't about to be experimented on or kill them. She'd enjoyed having an audience and making people laugh. She'd been nervous, and more than a little embarrassed, but it had helped having Bucky there in the crowd, grinning at her with a dopey look on his face.

Learning to juggle had quieted her mind over the past few days, though the knowledge that she was going to see Bucky soon had helped. And now that he was across from her, she felt a sense of ease and comfort that she had barely realised she'd been missing.

They hadn't mentioned her disappearing act yet, and Maggie didn't know what she was going to say when they did. She didn't feel like lying any more, to Bucky or to herself, and yet she knew that she was still in the same situation. She was still hopelessly attracted to Bucky – she couldn't quite stop herself from staring at him, or touching him when she got the chance – and yet the same issues of stability and compatibility remained.

But something had changed. She hadn't really come into this with any plans, beyond apologising to Bucky and juggling, but she knew she was done making herself unhappy for no good goddamn reason. Something had changed with Bucky as well: he kept  _looking_ at her, sometimes shooting her a smirk, as if he could sense her thoughts about him. She almost dismissed it, but when he reached up to demonstrate the height of a tank he and the Howling Commandos had taken down in 1944, and her eyes strayed to his stretching torso, he stretched a little longer and his eyes glinted at her.

He knew something was up, though he seemed happy enough to dance around it. Usually, they knew each other too well for either of them to conceal what they were thinking, but now Maggie was having more difficulty than usual reading Bucky. She got the sense that the Bucky Barnes of 1945 was flirty, but she wasn't sure about the man he was now. She was still new to all of this, and she was aware that her lack of experience left her open to mistakes and misinterpretation.

She knew that he cared for her, but she didn't know if he was  _attracted_ to her. He had a good handle on his body language, but she'd caught the slight slackening of his jaw when he first saw her in the red dress, and she wasn't the only one getting distracted at dinner. After she threw her head back and full-body laughed at one of his jokes, she noticed that dopey look on his face again. She ran one hand through her loose hair, and nearly fell out of her seat when Bucky's eyes darkened and his fingers twitched where they rested on the table, as if he wanted to reach out.

She didn't see why someone wouldn't be attracted to her – she had symmetrical features, a tall, athletic body, and she could perform many attractive skills such as proficient juggling, or lifting a car over her head. Of course, there were the detracting qualities such as her role as a former assassin, the knives in her feet, and her general mental instability. Bucky didn't seem to mind those traits, though, especially as he shared two out of three of them.

But she knew there was a difference between  _being_ attractive and someone being attracted to her, and all her research couldn't help her. Tired of overthinking, she just let herself enjoy laughing and talking with Bucky again. And if she let herself get caught up a little more than usual in the crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, or the line of his shoulders… well, she was only human. And that was something she was proud to be.

As they tried out a fancy Italian wine, Maggie realised that though she'd intended for this to be a  _Fuck You, HYDRA_ party, it was actually looking a lot like a  _date._ She'd never been on a date before, but she knew the basics from her research: two individuals dressing up nicely and having conversation over dinner and drinks. Though she supposed that an important component of a date was that both parties needed to know and agree that it was a date, and there'd been no verbal confirmation of that. She shrugged and sipped her wine. Either way, she knew that HYDRA would  _really_ hate whatever this was. Though she realised that she hadn't thought about HYDRA at all for almost an hour.

She was contemplating that as they paid – much to the displeasure of their waiter – and left the restaurant. Night had fallen, and she took a deep breath of the cooler air. Bucky was warm and solid to her left.

"Well," he said, adjusting his gloves. "The place for my thing is actually right next door."

"How convenient."

Bucky offered her his arm with another knowing smirk. She lifted her chin and wrapped one hand around his flesh bicep, trying to ignore how good he felt and trying to come up with a way to unsettle him in reprisal. They started walking, and she settled for pressing closer against his arm so there wasn't a fragment of space between them. She could feel the warmth of him radiating through his clothes. Bucky swallowed tightly, eyes skittering across her face and then away, and Maggie smirked to herself. So maybe that answered  _that_ question, but there was still a difference between mutual attraction and the possibility of having anything more.

Before her brain started working a mile-a-minute, Maggie rolled her eyes and let Bucky lead her. Thinking through all the possibilities and implications was getting exhausting. She let herself enjoy the head-rush of knowing that she wasn't alone in this new, strange feeling.

 

They didn't walk long – as Bucky said, his destination was next door. A furrow grew between Maggie's brows as she realised that it was some kind of… club? They were nodded through the door, and then strode across carpeted corridors, past a dining hall and a bar.

Sensing her growing confusion, Bucky laughed. "So it turns out that I was wrong when I said they don't have dance halls anymore," he explained as they approached a set of wooden double-doors. "Apparently there are still a few places you can go to do dancing that isn't… well, you know."

She knew: the rhythmic, mindless undulating and jumping that they'd attempted at the nightclub. She felt her cheeks go pink at the memory, and then they stepped through the doors.

It was a huge room with high ceilings, wooden floors, a stage at the far end and chandeliers hanging from the roof. There was a band on the stage, currently performing a jazzy rendition of a song that Maggie had never heard before. The wide room was filled with people in couples or groups, dancing to the song, while others milled around the edges chatting and sipping drinks.

She took a moment to absorb the spectacle: the swaying couples and the music crooning through the air, the faint squeak of shoes on the wooden floor. There were dancers in party clothes, like them, and others in more casual jeans and shirts. There were a wide range of ages, from people younger than Maggie to people who looked older than Bucky technically was. Arching windows on the other side of the room showed a view of the city lit up at night, with the glinting black ocean in the distance.

"You chose  _dancing_ ," Maggie smiled, her fingers tightening on Bucky's arm. As she watched, two giggling women in black dresses spun each other with a flare of skirts.

"Yeah." Bucky was smiling, but seemed almost… shy? "I hope that's okay, that I picked something that I already… well, that I  _used_ to know how to do. I learned a few new moves, at least."

"It's great," she reassured him with a grin. They stood arm-in-arm before the dancefloor, looking at each other. "But I think you've forgotten something crucial."

"What's that?"

" _I_ don't know how to dance. Last time we tried we were in the dark, you didn't see-"

"Oh I saw," he said, too quickly, and then ducked his head. Maggie was torn between embarrassment at the knowledge that someone had been paying attention to her pitiful attempt at dancing, and delight that the someone had been Bucky. "But you learned how to solve three Rubik's cubes while juggling them in two days," he continued. "I'm sure you can handle this."

Maggie looked back out at the couples on the dance floor. Not everyone looked like they knew what they were doing, but she saw enough seamless partners and flourishing dance moves to make her nervous. "It's not quite the same…"

"I'll show you." Bucky's voice was soft by her ear.

Maggie bit her lip. She'd just juggled in front of dozens of people, but the idea of trying this, dancing like  _that_ , with  _Bucky…_ She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders. She could do this. And she reflected that yes, this was something that HYDRA would really hate.

 _Fuck you, HYDRA,_ she thought, and nodded at Bucky. They left their bags and coats by the door, and then edged onto the dance floor. One song had just ended and the band was taking a few moments rest, so she had a short reprieve.

Bucky and Maggie found a clear spot by one of the arching windows, just inside the crowd of dancers but not so far in that they were surrounded, and faced each other. Maggie's gut was churning again. Bucky was there, in front of her, looking devastatingly good in his navy blue suit and waiting for her to touch him. Sensing her nervousness, Bucky didn't move. He just watched her patiently, his grey-blue eyes soft. His dark hair was untucked from his ears, the ends brushing against his jaw. The shyness from earlier had slipped away, and he didn't shrink or shift under her gaze – he remembered how to do this, and he was confident in his ability. Maggie, on the other hand…

When the opening notes of the next song started up and the other couples on the dance floor stepped together, Bucky cocked his head. "You alright, Meg? You don't have to do this if you don't want to."

She shook her head. "I know where to put my hands, just give me a second to remember."

He smirked, but something in his gaze deepened when she stepped towards him and set her right hand on his shoulder, over the seam between flesh and metal. She cocked an eyebrow and held up her other hand expectantly.

"Sure you aren't teaching me?" Bucky asked, taking her hand. The reassuring solidness of his metal hand in its glove settled on her waist. She kept her breaths steady.

The song playing now didn't have any words, just a steady, rolling rhythm, and Bucky was already moving his shoulders slightly with the beat. They stood a foot apart, their joined hands aloft and their feet planted.

"Alright, I'm just going to show you the basic steps – just watch what my feet are doing, and do the mirror image. See?" He took his hand away from her waist and started moving, stepping forward, then sideways, then back, moving in a one-two-three step with the beat of the music. "It's called a box step, you're just walking around in a square."

Maggie frowned down at his feet as he moved, her hand still in his and her arm still on his shoulder. When he stepped in again he came right up against her, his chest almost brushing her downturned head.

Once Maggie had watched him repeat the step a few times she started to feel self-conscious that she was just standing there like an idiot, so she stepped inwards with one of his back-steps.

"There you go," Bucky murmured, and his metal hand settled on her waist again, light but firm.

She immediately tripped, stepping right when Bucky went left, and her cheeks burned. She was meant to be good at learning things, this was what she got when she got distracted–

"It's alright," Bucky smiled, and then gently pressed against her side to pull her into the next step. "Don't just think about where your feet are going, you've got to pay attention to your whole body, and to mine."

"Great, more things to think about," she grumbled, but smiled at Bucky's chuckle. After another minute she started to get it, working with Bucky and the music, instead of just repeating the motions. Bucky sensed this and started to gently turn them, transforming their simple back-and-forth into an elegant circle. Maggie laughed, and couldn't resist a glance down at her feet to get a glimpse of herself  _dancing._

When she looked up, Bucky's eyes were on her face.

She grinned. "What, no tricks for me?"

Bucky looked skyward. "Oh, she wants tricks." Without any warning he pulled her into a quick, tight spin, trusting her to adjust to the change in pace. She squawked and her skirt snapped outwards but she held on, narrowing her eyes at him. He responded by grinning and changing up his steps a little, taking four where she only took two.

"Okay, okay! Hang on, I'm going to fall over."

"You're not falling," he said as they fell back into a more comfortable rhythm, now travelling across the floor. The smooth beat of the song washed over them. "You're doing great."

"Would I fit in at the dance halls?" she asked, leaning into the next turn. Once she knew the basic steps she found it astonishingly easy to follow Bucky's movements – she'd always known how to read him, and it seemed that reading his body was no different. She adjusted seamlessly to the bunch of his muscles, the pressure of his hands, the twinkle in his eye when he was about to do something unexpected. It was a little tricky negotiating with her heels, but she'd been able to do her whole juggling routine in them, so she quickly worked out how to take the quick, graceful steps needed for dancing.

"Absolutely not," Bucky responded, and then: "look out, I'm going to spin you."

Maggie was about to ask  _isn't that what you've been doing?_ when he released her waist and then used his hold on her hand to whirl her out in to a spin, sending her skirt and hair flying. She instinctively leaned into it, twisting her arm and then letting Bucky reel her back in, grinning. She laughed breathlessly, settling her right hand back on his shoulder.

"It's no fun when you warn me," she laughed, squeezing his hand, and something inside her went bright and fizzy at the way his face broke open in a wider smile, his eyes sparking mischievously.

"Is that right?" he asked, but missed the opportunity to spin her again as the song ended.

Maggie brushed her hair off her face, and laughed when Bucky did the same with his own hair.

"Is this alright?" he asked, eyes serious. The opening chords of the next song started.

Maggie couldn't believe he thought she might be unhappy with this: learning more people things, sharing it with Bucky, and having his hands on her and her hands on him. She cocked her head.

"You know if I didn't like it I'd tell you," she said, making him smile. "But really, look at my face-" she gave him a moment to take in her brilliant smile and flushed cheeks "- I  _love_ this. All I have to do now is get so good at dancing that you'll be so stunned by my skills that you never dance again."

They'd started moving instinctively to the opening beats of the next song, a little faster this time, small steps back and forth.

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Well then who are you going to dance with?"

"That is… an excellent point. Oh, I know this song!" The singer, a woman with sleek black hair, had stepped up to the microphone and was crooning the opening lyrics to  _Can't Take My Eyes Off You_. While Maggie was distracted Bucky snapped her into a twirl, and laughed at her indignant expression when she was back in his arms.

When the chorus came on Maggie threw her shoulders and hips into the dance, moving with the beat and laughing. Bucky changed up the footwork again and she effortlessly followed, finding that it was easier to move with the poppier beat.

"This is a foxtrot," Bucky explained, stepping smoothly into her. "Kind of."

The song turned out to be a crowd favorite, with couples and groups flooding the floor and chanting the lyrics. Bucky and Maggie couldn't move around as much so they did what they could in their small area, spinning and twisting to the beat. In the second chorus Bucky threw his hips into it like she had earlier, and Maggie got distracted by the sight of it. She almost didn't catch the glint in his eye when he stepped in close, slid his metal arm around to the small of her back and dipped her backwards.

Maggie instinctively seized a handful of his suit jacket, making him laugh, and she felt her hair tumble backwards. Just as quickly as he'd dipped her Bucky pulled her back up, and she thumped his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, did you want a warning?" he asked innocently, pulling her back into the foxtrot, and then laughed at her narrowed eyes.

Maggie got her revenge in the next song when she tripped him up and lowered him into a dip of her own, grinning wickedly down at his shocked face. She was strong enough to hold him there for as long as she liked, his foot trapped beneath hers and her arm behind his shoulder blades, but she waited only a second or two before she pulled him upwards. His heart pounded against her splayed fingers on his back. He blinked at her, hair in his face, too surprised to seamlessly move back into dancing. For a second Maggie thought that she'd maybe done something wrong, but then he huffed a laugh.

"I can honestly say that's the first time I've done that." They stepped back into the dance and Maggie laughed at his poleaxed expression.

"Are you going to survive?"

"We'll see," he replied. "Oh, I forgot to mention, I requested a couple of songs before we got here, you'll have to guess which ones."

Maggie blinked. "Oh?" She thought about it. "Do I get any clues?"

"You'll know," he said, winking. Maggie was about to protest when she bumped into another dancer and apologised profusely.

There were some really good dancers in the hall, waltzing and foxtrotting and doing who knew what else with ease, but most people looked like they were just out to have fun.

Maggie was having fun. It was a concept she'd familiarised herself over the past year, but there was something new about doing this with Bucky – her stomach churned, her skin prickled, and her cheeks were aching from laughter.

Bucky looked like he was having fun, too. The club dancing of weeks earlier hadn't done him justice – he knew how to do this, stepping and turning and moving so smoothly with the music that Maggie felt lighter than air. He'd sold himself short when he said that he used to fudge the steps.

The next few songs were from his time, but he shook his head when Maggie asked if he'd requested them. All the same, he mouthed the words along with the singer and made Maggie laugh. He showed her a few more tricks, complicated steps and turns that made her arms and legs work in new ways.

During the next song, which sounded like it was from Bucky's time but was actually a cover of  _Halo,_ Maggie stepped back in from a turn and said: "You said you learned new moves?"

Bucky laughed. "I've been doing them! But I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve, don't you worry. Here's one of them, it should  _probably_ work." With that reassuring note, he stepped in close at the chorus of the song, put both hands on her waist and  _lifted_. Maggie squawked and grabbed his shoulders as she was hoisted into the air above the other dancers. She was too startled to do anything but gape down at Bucky's face, grinning from somewhere around her midriff.

"I've got you," he laughed, and then lowered her gently back down with barely a hint of effort. A distant part of Maggie reflected that HYDRA had certainly not intended for their super-soldier strength to go toward dance lifts. The rest of her was pumping with adrenaline from the sudden lift, and flustered at the feel of Bucky's palms – metal and flesh – pressing against her skin.

"Alright?" Bucky asked, spinning her gently.

Maggie opened and closed her mouth. "I remember seeing the video of those swing dancers, doing all of those… spinny lifts, and things, but I didn't think you'd do it!"

Bucky swayed with the music, pulling her with him. "I didn't use to – too scared I'd drop a dame, I think." He grinned. "You're a bit more durable."

Maggie rolled her eyes, and they slowed down as the song did. "Well as long as I'm durable. You know, I didn't throw any juggling balls at your head in my half of this party, yet you seem pretty determined to trip me up."

Bucky looked a little bit sorry, but then said: "Dancing's about your instincts, and it can be about surprising the other person. I'm not trying to trip you up, Meg, I'm just…" he bit his lip, thinking. "Trying to make you laugh, I guess."

Maggie's cheeks flushed against her will, and she covered it up by glancing down at her feet.

The song started to build up again, and Bucky added: "You could pick me up if you wanted, get even. You might get some funny looks, though."

Maggie laughed, imagining the stares she'd get from picking up Bucky, who was far bulkier than her. "I'll have to settle for getting you to pick me up again," she said, with a challenging look in her eye. The singer had just built to the height of her song, belting out the lyrics with her arms spread and her eyes shut.

In the split second Maggie took to look up at the singer, Bucky stepped in close again. His hands found her waist and before she knew it she was in the air again, the cooler air on her face and Bucky's sturdy arms keeping her aloft. She let go of his shoulders and spread her arms, tilting her face toward the glittering chandelier. The music washed over her and she grinned, allowing herself to feel how happy she was in this moment, dancing with Bucky.

Maggie was startled by how much it felt like flying.

When she lowered her arms Bucky pretended to drop her, letting her freefall for a split second before he caught her around her middle and lowered her the rest of the way. Of course, this had the effect of bringing her very close to him by the time her feet hit the floor. Face flushed, hair wild, Maggie's breath caught in her chest at the sight of Bucky so close, his arms around her and her whole vision filled with  _him._ She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. His grey-blue eyes were dark.

The attraction, Maggie was familiar with. But the sudden prickle of fear – nerves? – that washed across her at the prospect of him so close, with nothing holding her back… that was new. She swallowed and began stepping with the beat again, fumbling for his shoulder and his hand in an attempt to find some dancing pose that didn't feel quite so much like an embrace.

"Um," she said, and winced. "So you said you were learning these moves, how did you do that by yourself in a safehouse?"

Bucky's eyes flickered across her flushed face, and he must have been satisfied with what he found because a small smile lifted his lips for a moment, and then he eased back into the movements of the dance. "This whole experience is going to seem a lot less smooth if you go picturing that, doll."

Damn. Just when she'd been working herself back from whatever that moment was, he went and called her  _doll_. She remembered how he had explained the meaning, and she noted that he was saying it now when no one else could hear. She felt the tips of her ears flame with heat, and she suddenly didn't know where to look. But she couldn't help but laugh at his comment, picturing him watching how-to videos alone in a safehouse and dancing with an imaginary partner.

The next song came on, and Maggie gasped. "This one!" she exclaimed, jumping on the spot. "You requested this song!" It was Glen Miller's  _In The Mood_ , and she recognised it because it was the first song Bucky had ever shown her.

Bucky grinned and nodded, and pulled her into a faster-paced dance, stepping and twirling in and out from each other. Maggie started kicking her feet and rolling her arms, like the dancers in the swing video she'd seen, and Bucky laughed.

"What are you doing?"

She spun in place. "Teach me to Jitterbug, Bucky!"

"Aw, jeez."

What followed was a very poor explanation of swing dancing, until Maggie eventually told him to dance the way he would have seventy years ago and she'd follow along. He got into that, lowering his centre of gravity so they could spin in and out from each other, Maggie trying to imitate his effortless kicks and footwork. He was really in his element here, stepping and spinning, his hands guiding her without feeling pushy. She got the sense that dancing would be far harder with a less experienced partner, who didn't know how to work with her natural balance and rhythm, who didn't know how to make her laugh and feel utterly supported and trusted.

They danced every single song, having more than enough endurance, though Maggie's muscles burned at the new movements and her face was flushed. That last part might have been because of the exertion, or the warm room, but she knew the real reason.

Michael Jackson's  _The Way You Make Me Feel_  came on, and Maggie didn't even have to ask if Bucky had requested it - the look in his eyes was answer enough. After dancing together for most of the song, he spun her and then pulled her close, murmuring into her ear: "Here's another new move."

He let go of her for a moment – Maggie was startled at how cold she felt without him – winked at her, and then proceeded to execute a perfect moonwalk away from her. His shoes slid across the floor and his muscles bunched and loosened with each step. Maggie put a hand over her mouth, laughing, and only laughed harder when a nearby group of dancers wolf-whistled. Bucky looked up, and there wasn't an iota of embarrassment on his face – he was utterly confident, in every aspect of dancing. He planted his feet, cocked an eyebrow at Maggie and gestured as if to ask  _well?_

Maggie gave him a round of applause, and ignored the skip in her heartbeat when he strode back to her and took her in his arms as if she belonged there.

"That was incredible!" she grinned at him. "You teach me that, and I'll teach you to juggle."

"It's a deal," he smiled, as the next song started. It was slower, and Maggie only vaguely recognized it. "That's it for the songs I requested. This has been… a great party, Meg."

They were dancing much closer than they'd started out, the small sliver of air between them warm and charged. Prickles were running down Maggie's skin wherever they touched, but she didn't feel uncomfortable. She felt good, as if she'd never run away from Bucky and left them both alone and miserable. She remembered what Beatrice had said about being a thinker, or a feeler. She could think through the possibilities and consequences of this all she liked, but she couldn't deny that being with Bucky made her happy. She'd had precious little happiness in her life, and she wasn't going to turn away the happiness she had now.

The song was slow, and sweet, and Maggie just wanted to melt into Bucky. His hands were steady, and his glittering grey-blue eyes were bursting with that familiar expression, the one she used to think looked like he was seeing her for the first time. Maggie realised she was smiling softly.

The dancing they'd been doing before was playful, energetic, but this wasn't a song to show off in. This song invited them to simply hold each other and  _be._

Maggie felt another crackle-spark of attraction flare in the space between them, and her gut swooped when Bucky's eyes flicked down to her lips. They were so close, Bucky's left arm wrapped around her waist and her right arm cradling his shoulder. She noticed that her left thumb was sweeping back and forth across the back of his hand.

Maggie realised three things at once. The first was that Bucky had been gauging, testing throughout the night – the purposeful touches, the dancing, calling her  _doll._ He'd been trying to work out how she felt about him, somehow picking up on the paradigm shift in recent weeks.

The second thing she realised was that he wasn't going to act on whatever he'd found out, and she knew why. They'd been on the run together for a year now, and though they'd talked  _extensively_ about it, she knew he still bore guilt for the deaths of her parents. That was his right – he knew she'd forgiven him, but he still felt what he felt.

He wasn't going to make the first move because of that guilt, and because he'd shown, in his words and his actions over the past year, that he valued her choices. He knew better than anyone how few choices she'd had in her life, and he gave her every opportunity to exert her will now that she was free.

The third thing Maggie realised was that this was an opportunity, and she sure as hell wasn't going to let him get away with doing nothing. She  _wanted_ this, wanted him. Always. Forever. Feeling this good felt crazy, and she wasn't going to let it go.  _Nothing worse than regrets, sweetheart._

So she made the first move. Her heart was pounding against her ribcage, and her stomach churned. She could barely concentrate on stepping in time to the music, she was so focused on this moment.

She couldn't take a few minutes to think about it this time, this was a time to act.

She was too jittery to look Bucky in the eyes, so she watched her hand as she slid it across his shoulder and up the side of his neck, feeling his smooth, warm skin under her fingertips. Goosebumps rose under her touch, and his Adam's apple jumped under her thumb. She trailed her fingers up his neck, sliding to cup his jaw. It was clean shaven, and the feel of him, warm and solid under her palm, made the breath catch in Maggie's chest.

Her eyes flicked to his, and her breath stuttered again to see him watching her intently, his eyes dark and serious. Maggie's hand moved incrementally, and her fingertips brushed his ear.

"Is this okay?" she asked, her voice low and surprisingly steady. She was kind of dazzled by the simple act of touching him, and how good she felt.

Bucky swallowed again, eyes on her, and nodded. "Meg, are you sure?"

"Pretty damn sure," she breathed, and  _oh_ , they were close now, their noses brushing, breath mingling, nothing but Bucky's eyes before her, grey and blue and warm. Maggie realised –  _again_ – that she still hadn't done any research on this, but one moment she was thinking about kissing him and the next she was, his lips warm on hers. Her eyes drifted closed.

Maggie was too overwhelmed by the sheer pleasure of  _kissing Bucky_ to think. Her brain shorted out and her body took over, leaning into him and doing what felt right. She didn't have time to think about breathing, or her one other experience with this, because Bucky was there,  _finally_ , his lips – oh, his tongue – his hands in her hair, his scorching touch and the whir of his arm–

Maggie probably should have been thinking about breathing, because after a long moment she had to break away, gasping for air, taking only a moment to laugh at herself and Bucky's blue, confused eyes before she leaned back in, pressing herself against him and melting under his lips.

After a few more moments of her whole body imploding at how good she felt, her brain came back online – albeit sluggishly – and she paid attention to some of Bucky's cues, tilting her head so their noses stopped bumping together, and learning from the sure slide of his lips and teasing darts of his tongue. She mirrored what he did back to him, and smiled into the kiss when his arm whirred. Heat coiled in her gut and shot in sparks down her legs and arms, lighting up anew with each press of Bucky's lips against hers.

Conscious that this was a public space, and it probably wasn't appropriate to start making noise – because that was apparently something that her body wanted to do, now – Maggie gently pulled back. She couldn't resist a few more darting kisses though, planted over Bucky's surprisingly red mouth. She wondered if her lips looked like that, now – they certainly felt tender.

Maggie laughed breathlessly, her forehead still pressed against Bucky's, almost vibrating out of her skin with an emotion she identified as joy. Bucky's flesh hand was in her hair, cupping the back of her head, and his metal arm was wrapped around her waist. Maggie took a moment to remember where her limbs were, and realised that she was on the balls of her feet, with one hand still on Bucky's jaw and the other looped around his neck.

She grinned at him, taking in his blown pupils and the crinkles beside his eyes, the thumping heartbeat that pounded from his chest into hers.

"How the hell are you meant to breathe?" she asked, and Bucky's eyes sparked with laughter.

"With your nose, doll." He kissed her on the nose, as if she might have forgotten where it was. When he met her eyes again his gaze was filled with emotion; affection and want and a little surprise. He slid his nose against hers, and Maggie realized that a new song was playing.

"Why?" he asked, breath against her lips, moving his fingers in her hair.

Maggie shrugged, and decided she was well within her rights to run her fingers along his cheekbone, like she'd been wanting to do for a while now. "Life doesn't always make sense," she whispered. "And you're… you. I don't know, I'm not good at this." What she'd just done sank in a little, and she met his eyes again. "Bucky," she said urgently. "My whole life in HYDRA has been… cold. This can't be like that, I don't want that any more. This has to mean something."

"Meg, I…" Bucky shook his head, and the words seemed to choke in his throat, but Maggie could see how much he wanted what she was asking for: his eyes, which she'd been able to read in place of words for years, were bright. She could see how much he cared about her, and it took her breath away.

They leaned together again simultaneously, and this time the kiss was slow, sure; just moving lips and pounding hearts. Maggie's hand slid into Bucky's long hair, and he shivered when her nails scraped his scalp.

She was  _very_ grateful for the tip about breathing through her nose, because it meant she could kiss him for a lot longer.

After another song, Bucky pulled back and clenched his jaw, something darker crossing his face. "Are you sure about  _me_ , Meg? Everything I've done, especially to you-"

"Bucky," she sighed, dropping back onto her heels and looking at him. "I am  _sure._  And I… I can't imagine feeling this way about anyone other than you." She looked into his eyes, making sure he really understood that she meant it. "Are  _you_  sure?"

"Been sure a while now," he grinned wryly, "But I thought you needed me to be your friend, so-"

"Same, but this is much better." She grinned at him. "Now get back over here, I don't think I'm very good at this and the best way to learn is practice."

"Oh, you're doing just fine," Bucky said, and ran a hand through his hair.

Maggie smiled at him, and thought that she should probably do some research on whether it was possible to have a heart attack or an embolism from feeling so much. "Come on," she said, reaching for him as the next song started. "More kissing."

He came willingly, reaching up to cup her jaw like she'd done only minutes earlier. "Yes, ma'am."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo long, but my god I know y'all have been waiting so long for this.
> 
> The cover of Halo I mention is the Postmodern Jukebox one with LaVance Colley – the song is so goddamn good, that man's voice is insane.
> 
> The song that Maggie vaguely recognises is Elvis's Can't Help Falling in Love With You. I didn't mention the song in the story because I'm not that lame, but it is that song because I am lame.


	30. Chapter 30

They spent the next few days holed up in their safehouse, not doing much besides eating, sleeping, and lots and lots of kissing. Maggie was glad she'd found a safehouse before the  _Fuck You, HYDRA_ party, because her brain was running on half-capacity ever since she and Bucky kissed. She had just enough brain space on the way to the safehouse to remind Bucky that this was her first time doing anything like this, and they agreed to take things slow.

For days they existed in a romantic fugue state, only really breaking off to speak a few times, mumbling things like "been wanting to do this for a while now," and "do that again". Bucky discovered sensitive spots on Maggie's neck and behind her ears that made her mind melt into a puddle of goo, and she in turn discovered that he liked her hands in his hair, and that he would shiver every time she brushed her lips against the point where his neck met his shoulder.

They fell asleep fully clothed (well, mostly – Maggie had taken the first possible opportunity to get Bucky's jacket and gloves off) on the safehouse couch, limbs tangled and hair in each other's faces. The next morning Bucky woke from a nightmare about falling off the train in 1945, but it turned out that was very easily fixed with a short discussion and then lots more kissing. Over the next two days they learned each other's bodies, breaking off to put together some hasty sandwiches, or pour cereal, and more often than not ended up abandoning the meals in favor of each other. They showered separately, but it was a near thing.

Now that Maggie had worked out how to breathe through her nose, things were a lot easier. They were honest with each other about what they liked and what they didn't, and Maggie checked with Bucky that she was doing things right, as he was the one with experience. He had no complaints.

By the second day, Maggie was already questioning why she'd wanted to go slow. Each touch only invited more; with each kiss her body just wanted another, and another, every part of Bucky with every part of her. Bucky seemed perfectly happy to go at the pace she wanted, his more experienced hands and mouth keeping up with the thoughts and feelings that she sometimes found hard to express. Every now and then they had to slow down, either because Maggie got overwhelmed and didn't know what to do, or because one or both of them got a little too into it and they had to back off, to keep up some semblance of 'going slow.'

Maggie kept waiting for some kind of rational thought to enter her mind, but she existed only in a heady rush of  _Bucky_ , and her body discovering new and wonderful things.

In the end, it was Bucky who pulled back for air after who knew how long, and said "Meg, we need to…" he cleared his throat. "We need to talk about this."

Maggie, who had been happily exploring his bottom lip while sitting on his lap on the couch, blinked at him dazedly for a few moments. His hands were on her waist, both metal and flesh, and his torso was warm and solid against her right leg. Her hand had somehow found its way under his shirt and was resting just over his navel.

"Right," she said, and couldn't help the brilliant grin that crossed her face whenever their lips weren't locked. He grinned back. Things had gotten heated very quickly, but when that fell away they were left with their sheer affection for one another. Then they usually started kissing again, and then… well, it was self-fulfilling cycle.

But this time, Bucky was right. It probably wasn't sustainable to do nothing but kiss each other for the rest of their earthly existence.

Maggie cleared her throat, retracted her hand from under his shirt and leaned against the back of the couch, with one arm still slung around his neck. She kept her legs on his.

Bucky kept one hand at the small of her back, but his eyes were a little clearer as he looked at her. His lips were swollen and Maggie noticed a purple mark blooming on his neck. She could feel mirrors of the bruise forming on her own neck.

"Meg," Bucky said, and there was a laughing note to his voice that made her meet his eyes. He'd noticed her ogling his neck.

She grinned unabashedly. "I'm listening!"

"You sure about that?" His grey-blue eyes glinted and his flesh hand slid up her leg to snag her hand. It was very unhelpful for her focus, but she saw his challenge and met it, tangling her fingers with his and arranging her face in the perfect picture of rapt attention. The sun glowed through their papered-over windows, casting a halo over Bucky's mussed up hair and illuminating the sparkling blue in his eyes.

"Alright," he smiled, and then his eyes grew serious. "Meg, I gotta know… was this why you left?"

Maggie sighed, and looked down at their joined hands on her thigh. They hadn't actually talked about it yet, and she supposed it was time to come clean.

"That day I…" she hesitated, and frowned at her lap. "I saw someone who reminded me of a man who… who tried to hurt me, back in HYDRA." Her eyes flickered up to Bucky's, and she could see from the stormy expression on his face that he understood exactly what she meant. She swallowed. "I killed him. Without any orders, and without a second thought."

Bucky worked his jaw. "Meg, you can't feel guilty for that – you recognised a threat and you took it out the only way you knew how."

She sighed. It was going to take a while for her to come to terms with it, but she knew Bucky was right. Of all the people she'd killed, she didn't think she needed to be particularly guilt stricken about  _him._

"I'm sorry, Meg," Bucky murmured, and in his blue-grey eyes she could see it, his concern and his sympathy and some remaining shreds of anger for the long-dead soldier.

She offered him a watery smile, then took a deep breath. "So I was thinking about that, that day, but there's more." He nodded for her to go on. "I really freaked out… because of  _this_." She gestured between the two of them, and bit her lip. Bucky's eyes softened. "I don't know what  _normal_ is. I've been feeling this way for a while, but I only realized what it  _was_ a few weeks ago. And I didn't understand." At that she looked up, and noticed that Bucky's eyes had gone soft and sad. She shook her head and squeezed his hand. "I've been pretty much exclusively researching attraction and relationships for the past few weeks, I'm a bit more caught up now."

That made him grin and lean into kiss her. "Of course you did," he said when he pulled away, eyes crinkling. "Particle physics?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow.

Maggie flushed. "What was I meant to say, that I was googling the phrase 'butterflies in my stomach'?"

Bucky grinned again, that dazzling flash of white teeth, and his arm whirred. "Find anything useful?"

"Well…" Maggie bit her lip again. "I sort of came to the conclusion that I  _shouldn't_ do anything about… this." That made his grin slip away. "I read that relationships needed stability, mental health, room to grow. And I was scared that we'd become  _too_ dependent on each other – a person needs more than just  _one_ other person in their life, Bucky, we can't be all things to each other."

Bucky nodded, and she could see him turning it over in his mind. "That makes sense. So what changed your mind?" He lifted their joined hands as illustration.

Maggie took a moment to run her eyes over him, his mussed-up hair, the hickeys on his throat, and the air of easy happiness in his frame. "You make me  _really_ happy," she said, and her whole body lit up at the smile that brought to his face. "I realised it was stupid to turn that away."

"Very stupid," He agreed. "Poor decision."

She elbowed him with her free arm and then threaded her fingers into his hair. " _But_ , the problem still remains. So if we're going to do this – and I don't know about you, but I would really like to–" Bucky nodded enthusiastically, and she continued. "Then we need some ground rules."

"Agreed."

In the end it only took them ten minutes to come up with a set of rules – more like guidelines – to make sure that a romantic relationship wouldn't compromise their safety, identities, or their already solid relationship. They agreed that they wouldn't be beholden to each other – if one of them wanted to keep something to themselves, or didn't want to talk about something, the other had to respect that. But they both firmly agreed that there would be no lying.

They were going to keep more or less the same rules around personal contact that they'd had before – asking permission unless they were completely, one hundred percent sure that the other person wanted that contact.

Maggie also pointed out that they couldn't be around each other every second of the day, as they had been for over 48 hours now. She said that they needed some mandated alone time, whether that was splitting up naturally for surveillance, doing activities by themselves, or a simple walk.

"It's probably worth picking up odd jobs if we're going to be staying places for longer," Bucky suggested. "That's time apart, and it'll avoid suspicion."

"Great idea," Maggie said. They'd slid sideways on the couch, so her head was now on the armrest and the side of his face was pressed against the back of the couch. "And… if we think of anything else or if anything else comes up, we'll discuss it then."

Bucky nodded. "Sounds like a plan. We're pretty good at talking about stuff." He winked at her and pinched her thumb, and she dug her toe into his ribs in retaliation.

"We had it pretty good before, all things considered," she said. "Healthy. We need that same respect and trust, but with like, exponentially more kissing."

Bucky nodded sagely. "You are the genius here," he agreed, and slipped forward to hover over her on the couch, their legs hopelessly tangled and their skin crackling wherever they touched.

"Don't forget it," Maggie grinned, her vision filled with his laughing grey-blue eyes and his dark hair. She'd thought that talking about why she'd run away would bring a pall over this new joy they'd found, that acknowledging the new complications in their relationship would make things more difficult. But it seemed all it took was a ten-minute conversation to ease her doubts. She could see some semblance of a future now, despite the fact that they were both on the run and still a little bit crazy.

Bucky closed the short distance to kiss her again, one hand sliding up her leg, over her hip and into the dip at her waist. Maggie looped one arm around his neck and wanted to kick herself – they could have been doing this ages ago. She bit Bucky's lip and grinned at his murmured grumble. She decided she wouldn't punish herself for not doing this sooner – it was happening  _now,_ and she was determined to enjoy it.

 

* * *

 

The next day they packed up their safehouse and got on a bus to Western Australia. They'd been fairly visible, what with the juggling and the dancing and the kissing that leaned towards publicly inappropriate on the dance floor, and they thought it was best to get moving just in case.

They sat at the back of the bus, Bucky by the window and Maggie in the aisle seat. They were surrounded by empty seats, as they'd made sure to book tickets for a bus that would have  _some_ passengers on it, but not too many.

It felt strange being in public, calling on her skills as the Wyvern to stay alert, when so much had changed between she and Bucky. It had only been a few days, but something about taking that extra step had changed something between them that couldn't be undone. Not that she wanted to undo it. Their fingers were linked and her left arm pressed against his right, offering each other comfort. But it wasn't like the lazy, exploratory touches they'd shared in the safehouse – now they were both on alert, albeit surreptitiously, monitoring the other inhabitants of the bus and the traffic outside the windows.

Maggie was reading a book, so Bucky was more alert than her, but that didn't stop her from counting how many times each passenger on the bus went to the bathroom. She'd already checked the bathroom for bugs and communication tech, but it paid to be safe.

Maggie stretched her neck and winced – she'd bruised her shoulder that morning, when she and Bucky had fallen off their safehouse couch like a couple of idiots. The bruise would heal soon enough, just as the hickies already had, but it was a reminder that they had to be careful with each other. They'd laughed that one off, but she'd noticed that Bucky was more careful than usual with his metal arm now, when it came to her.

Halfway into the trip, Maggie finished her book – a collection of biographies of female WWII spies and agents, including her Aunt Peggy – and followed Bucky's gaze out the window. It was beautiful here, red sandy deserts fading into thick bush, with the occasional glint of the cerulean blue ocean.

Maggie rested her head experimentally on Bucky's shoulder, and smiled at him when he turned to look down at her, eyebrows raised. "It's your birthday in a few days," she murmured.

Bucky huffed a laugh. "The big nine-eight."

"Mm, you're almost a centenarian. What do you want to do?"

"I don't mind," he said. "Scotch and steaks like last year, maybe. Why, did you have something in mind?"

"Always," she grinned. "You should know that by now."

"Oh, I do. Your mind is terrifying."

That made her laugh, and she knocked her knee against his. Out of the corner of her eye she saw another passenger walk past them to use the bathroom. It was that passenger's third visit, but it was a long trip and they were elderly, so she didn't suspect anything untoward.

"You know," Bucky said, playing with her fingers. "All things considered, you're handling this pretty well."

She rolled her head to look up at him, frowning. "Handling what?"

He squeezed her hand in answer. "Figuring out how you felt, talking about us… all of it. I'm sorry you had to figure it out on your own. When I started wanting something more I was sure that I was going to be asking for something that you didn't understand. But I think you've got a better handle on this than I do."

She grinned again. "Well there's a  _lot_ of information out there, once you start looking. But I think mostly it comes from practice, so I'm working on it. Did you have a lot of experience with relationships, before the war?"

Bucky ducked his head. "Uh… not  _serious_  ones, exactly."

"You're blushing!" Maggie exclaimed, and lifted her head from his shoulder so she could get the full effect.

"Well, it's… I was a different guy back then-"

"Not so different, surely," she smirked.

"Okay, maybe, but… I'm serious about this, Meg, about you. Maybe if I'd met you in a Brooklyn bar in 1940 it'd be a bit different, but-"

"Oh?" Maggie straightened and pressed her free hand to her chest. "Bucky Barnes, are you saying that you would seduce me and then leave me?"

He was really blushing now, and Maggie was  _thrilled_. "Aw, Meg, c'mon-"

"I'm just teasing," she said, and leaned in to press a kiss to his pink cheek. "You menace, you. I understand." His blush faded a little, and he scowled at her. "We'll figure this out together," she smiled, and that made the scowl fade into a dopey look.

"You're lucky I like you," he huffed, and let her lay her head back on his shoulder. He dropped a kiss onto her hair, and Maggie felt warmth bloom in her chest and melt down to the tips of her toes.

They were on the run, and in hiding, but they'd lived like this for over a year now. With this new piece of happiness in their lives, Maggie could almost imagine that they had a future.

 

* * *

 

March 10th, 2015  
Karratha, Australia

It had only been about a week since the night at the dance hall, but Maggie had resigned herself to the fact that she would forever be wanting to touch Bucky, and be touched in return.

She'd imagined worse fates for herself.

They'd been travelling most of the week, hopping from town to town on the west coast and spending every spare minute wrapped up in each other. They were still ostensibly taking things slow, but Maggie had discovered that she was a very impatient person, when it came to what her body wanted.

They'd settled for now in Karratha, a small city in an arid region, separated from the ocean by salt flats and mangrove forests. They'd found a relatively nice safehouse, a small place with one bedroom and a tin roof, and they were working on finding casual jobs that they could get away with fudging CVs for, and which would keep them from being too exposed to many strangers who would recognise their faces. Though they doubted that anyone would expect to find a former HYDRA assassin in a mining town in regional Western Australia.

But she wasn't going to think about any of that today, because today was Bucky's birthday.

Maggie woke up first, uncomfortable in the early-morning Australian heat. It didn't help that she and Bucky were sandwiched together on one bed, with his metal arm looped under her torso and her face pressed into his neck. Bucky had remarked yesterday that he was impressed by the fact that she didn't seem to need to breathe while asleep, as evident by how deeply she burrowed her face into his skin when they slept together.

They still hadn't gone much further than kissing and a  _lot_ of touching, and they'd set up two cheap bedframes with threadbare mattresses in their safehouse, but most nights in the past week had seen them falling asleep together, dropping off in each other's arms. They'd only had a few nightmares between them, and their routine for dealing with that didn't change much when they were in the same bed.

When she woke, Maggie took a moment to smile to herself, and then extricated herself from Bucky's neck, craning her head back to get a look at him. As was true of most people, he looked younger when asleep, his lips slightly parted and his face relaxed. Maggie had a flash-memory of a picture of him with closed eyes and a frozen face. She frowned, placing the memory: Project Leader Peters had given her a file with Bucky's face in it before the second time she fought him. It had had the name: Barnes.

Maggie sighed and brushed away the memory. It was a part of her now, settling in beside her other memories of fighting Bucky in a cage, flying through frozen air, and obeying orders from the Project Leader. But she wouldn't let it taint today, or the sight of Bucky sleeping peacefully, with his metal arm wrapped around her and his eyelashes brushing his cheeks.

"You get a good look?" Bucky mumbled, eyes still closed.

Maggie grinned. "I'm trying, but it's just… your  _face_ , you know? Hard to see anything good about it."

Bucky cracked an eye open at that, and the bleary glare he shot her made her laugh. "Please," he grumbled, "You can't resist thi-" he trailed off into a yawn, and Maggie blinked at his tonsils.

"It's true," she said, because it was his birthday, and when he was done yawning she rolled over, lying flat on his torso and propping her chin on his chest. Bucky grunted – an Adamantium-reinforced skeleton was a lot to have unceremoniously dropped on your body first thing in the morning – and lifted his head to look at her.

Maggie grinned at his sleepy features. "How's it feel to be ninety eight?"

Bucky blinked, and his flesh hand reached up to brush her cheek. "So far? Pretty great."

"Sap," she accused, and leaned up to kiss him. When she pulled away, she hesitated at the careful blankness on Bucky's face. "What?"

"Doll," he said, "It's my birthday, and I like you very much."

She squinted at his tone. "But…?"

"But," he shot her an apologetic look. "You have terrible morning breath."

Maggie's hand flew to her mouth, and she carefully sniffed her breath. She grimaced. "That's fair," she said. "Hang on." She rolled off Bucky and jogged to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She was embarrassed, sure, but the idea that she could have something so mundane as morning breath, and have someone like Bucky to tell her about it, was a novelty and a joy that she wasn't going to take for granted.

When she came back into the room she was smiling. Bucky was a little more awake now, trudging through the kitchen and making a cup of coffee. Maggie followed him into the kitchen and hopped up on the counter, watching him grumble at the glowing buttons on the kettle. She liked his half-awake morning rituals, the way he was cranky and barely legible until he had a cup of coffee. He'd apparently been like that in Brooklyn and during the war, too. She liked that about him, that despite all of HYDRA's brainwashing and training, Bucky Barnes was not a morning person.

Bucky caught her grinning at his grumbling, and he scowled at her. It didn't stop him from brushing his hand against her thigh as he walked to the sink, or leaning in for a kiss that tasted of coffee and toothpaste. That kiss turned into two, then three, and Bucky then grumbled that his coffee was cold, but he didn't turn away from her.

Maggie grinned against his mouth. "Are you ready for your presents?"

"Is it warm coffee?" he asked, ducking to kiss her jaw. Maggie laughed, and felt the shape of his smile against her skin.

"It can be," she said, then nudged him until she had enough space to hop down from the counter. She opened the fridge with a flourish, and gestured at the items inside: a half-full bottle of milk, a plastic bag with two premium porterhouse steaks, and a collection of vegetables that would go very well with a steak dinner. Bucky grinned and moved in to kiss her again, but she gave him a stern look, and retrieved the bottle of scotch she'd stashed on top of the fridge.

"Ta da!"

At that Bucky did kiss her, squashing the brown bottle between their chests. "Thank you, Meg," he said, when they came up for air. "It's perfect."

Maggie smiled, and reached up to snag the ends of his hair between her fingers. She bit her lip, and then said: "There's more, but we're going to have this for dinner and I wanted to show you now. Bucky, I…" she frowned, avoiding his gaze by focusing on her fingers in his hair.

"Meg?"

"I'm sorry that it's just me," she eventually bit out, and met his eyes. "I mean, I'm not sorry that I'm here, but… You're used to spending your birthdays surrounded by friends and family, and I'm sorry they're gone." She felt like she knew Bucky's whole family by now, he talked about them so often – his three little sisters, his hard-working mom and his busy dad. Bucky's eyes softened, sadness filtering into his gaze.

"And…" she took a breath. "I'm sorry you can't spend this birthday with Steve, either. I wish you could." That said, she put the scotch on the kitchen counter, watching the emotions play across Bucky's face. She didn't  _want_ to make him sad, but she'd needed to say it.

Eventually, Bucky's shoulders sagged a little and he leaned into her. Maggie took his weight, arms wrapping around his chest.

"Me too," he sighed into her hair. They didn't usually spend their time wishing, but Maggie had spent over a year getting to know Bucky, and she got the sense that he was used to having a lot of friends and family around him, and when he couldn't have that, he had Steve. But now he couldn't even have that, because it was just too dangerous.

"What do you think he'd say, if he was here?" Maggie murmured, pressing her palm against his heartbeat.

Bucky huffed a laugh. "Beyond all the obvious things?"

"Sure."

"Probably something corny. He likes birthdays."

Maggie pressed a kiss against his temple. "Let's do something for his birthday, then."

Bucky pulled back and smiled at her. It was a sad smile, but it was there. "That's a good idea." He heaved a sigh, and then squared his shoulders. "You said there were more presents?"

"Well don't look too excited about it," Maggie teased, but her tone was soft.

She'd wrapped his presents this time: a small box covered in dark blue wrapping paper, with an exuberant silver bow on top. Sitting on the creaky floorboards of the safehouse, Bucky raised an eyebrow at the bow and proceeded to carefully unwrap the box, folding the paper and setting it aside. Maggie supposed that habits born in the Depression didn't die easily. She sat cross legged on the floor across from him, and watched him inspect his presents. He peered at the first item, which looked like an oddly clunky set of binoculars, and finally looked up at Maggie for explanation.

"It's called a Virtual Reality Planetarium," she said, showing him how to turn on the device. "You look through the lens and it'll show you what's in the sky around you – there's a bunch of different modes, and you can look at closeups of planets, constellations, galaxies and nebulae. The images were all taken from the Hubble Telescope."

Bucky held the binoculars up to his eyes, and his mouth dropped open. "That's Jupiter!" he exclaimed, pointing straight ahead. Maggie dodged his finger, laughing.

"And," she added, "It also comes with an audio explanation of the things you're seeing." She showed him where to put in the headphones.

Bucky spent the next ten minutes staring through the lenses of his new present, pointing out where each planet was in the sky, and marvelling at the images. Maggie watched him, arms wrapped around her knees, grinning.

"You like it?" she asked, rather unnecessarily, because Bucky hadn't shut up since he'd looked through the thing.

Bucky peeled his eyes away from the lenses and looked at her. "Meg, this is the pinnacle of human invention."

She threw her head back and laughed. "Bucky, no!"

But he was shaking his head. "Nope, I'm convinced. Humanity can't do any better than this."

"Okay, you know there are actual telescopes, though? That you can use to look at the real thing?"

That took the wind out of his sails a little. "True."

She shook her head. "This is just a more portable option." She knew he still had the copy of  _El Hobbit_ she'd given him last year, despite the fact that they only had so much room in their bags to carry things from town to town. She'd been a little more weight-conscious this time around.

Bucky grinned and picked up the last part of his present, a metal and leather multi-purpose tool.

"Is this a very small telescope?" he asked, holding it up to the light.

"No," she laughed. "I, uh, built it."

He glanced up at that. "Oh?"

"Yeah, it's a custom-designed tool for your arm." She nodded at the limb in question, gleaming silver in the morning light. "Pretty much everything I could think of that your arm needs for regular upkeep can be done with that tool – it's got torque wrenches, soldering irons, brushes… you name it. A mirror, too, so you can see what you're doing." She trailed off, not sure how to read the dumbstruck expression on Bucky's face.

He swallowed, balancing the tool on his palm and looking from it to Maggie. "How long did it take you to make this?"

Maggie wiped her palms on her sweatpants. "I've been thinking about it for a while. Putting it together only took a couple of days, though, with the right workshop. Is it… okay?" She suddenly had the thought that Bucky's arm was a large source of trauma for him, and it might not have been the smartest idea to bring it up on his birthday.

But she was thinking that one moment, and the next she was wrapped up in Bucky's arms and his mouth was on hers, as he showed her just how okay it was. She climbed into his lap, grinning into the kiss. This was the first thing she'd designed since the fall of HYDRA that she'd been able to manufacture and put into use, and so far she was pretty satisfied with her payment.

When Bucky pulled away, his blue-grey eyes warm with affection, Maggie couldn't help herself:

"I guess it is a pretty  _handy_ tool."

Bucky froze. "Meg."

She grinned, her shoulders shaking with contained laughter. "What?"

He looked horrified. "You just ruined it." He shook his head as her laughter spilled out, making her clutch her stomach and fall backwards off his lap. "That was worse than your elephant joke."

"Hey now," she argued, sitting up. "That elephant joke was the first joke I told in twenty years, I think I did alright."

Bucky shook his head again. "So what's this thing called?"

Maggie cocked her head. "Uh, nothing yet. I didn't think about naming it."

"Hmm." He flipped the tool over and flicked out a few attachments. He found the precision knife, raised an eyebrow at it, and then kept inspecting it. After a moment, he froze. "Oh no."

"What?"

"Meg," he said, eyes darting back and forth. "I've just thought of a terrible name for it."

Maggie scooted closer and pressed her hands together. "Tell me!"

"A Swiss Army Knife."

She deflated a little. "Bucky…" She knew the name hadn't been in circulation in the war, but she was sure he'd heard of them by now.

"No, Meg-" he looked up at her, and a faint grin played about his mouth. "A Swiss  _Arm_ y Knife."

Maggie had to close her eyes at the sheer awfulness of that pun. She was just about to tell Bucky off for making a pun when he'd just complained about hers, when a thought occurred to her. Her eyes snapped open. "Bucky, you lost your arm in Switzerland."

His grin spread across his face.

" _Bucky_." She gaped at him. "That's terrible!"

"I know."

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, watching Bucky grin wickedly at her. She eventually settled for reaching over and thumping him on the shoulder. "You can't go making jokes like that when I think your arm is a touchy subject!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Well it is a  _touchy_  subject," he said, and prodded her with one metal finger. Maggie swatted it away, and he laughed. "I'm sorry, Meg. But I don't know, it got in my head. And if I don't laugh about it, then…"

She softened at his remorse, and at the shadow of seriousness that fell across his face. "I get it," she said, and reached for his metal hand. She brought it to her mouth and planted a kiss on the cool metal. "Swiss  _Arm_ y Knife it is."

Bucky leaned in until their foreheads pressed together, noses brushing. Maggie stroked her thumb across his metal palm and listened to the faint whir of machinery.

"I almost feel like you don't deserve the rest of your birthday, after that," she eventually murmured.

"That's probably fair," Bucky chuckled, watching the juxtaposition of their fingers, metal and flesh. "Wait, there's more? Meg, don't spoil me."

She laughed. "Well we have to go outside for the next part."

"Terrible," Bucky said. "Worst news of the day. I can't do this outside." At that he wrapped an arm around Maggie's middle and pulled her forward, rolling onto his back and bringing her with him. He let out an exaggerated  _oof_ when she fell on him, and she retaliated by digging her elbow into his ribs even as she kissed him, her hair tumbling around them.

They lay like that for a while, kissing in a tangle of limbs, surrounded by Bucky's presents and carefully folded wrapping paper. When his arm let out a particularly loud whir, Maggie broke away with a laugh.

"You're a menace," she breathed, pushing Bucky's hair affectionately off his face. "Come on, we've got outside plans."

"Don't you know I'm ninety eight? I'm too old to be going outside." But he let her pull him to his feet.

"You'll like this, I promise. Go get dressed."

"Are you sure you want me to?" He asked, winking over his shoulder as he strode toward the bathroom. She threw a pillow at his head.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of those great writing moments where I realized the joke after I'd already written the object. Of course, then the better part of me said "no, that's too dark, I can't write that." The rest of me said "THE WORLD MUST KNOW." So here we are. With a Swiss Army Knife. I kinda feel like I should apologize.
> 
> On a better gift-giving note, Virtual Reality Planetariums are a thing, and a great gift idea!
> 
> Look, I know this is a lot of fluff. But hear me out: they deserve it. You deserve it. And we all kinda know what's coming.
> 
> Please comment, lovely people! I love hearing from you guys - what you enjoyed, what you've got questions about, even when you're just screaming "Finally!"


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning that there is an M-rated scene in this chapter, if that's not your thing it starts from "back at the safehouse" and lasts until the next line break, it's easy enough to skim over. Over and out, enjoy the chapter!

 

"Y'know, this is the first time I've had to scale a cliff on my birthday."

Maggie rolled her eyes at Bucky as he swung down the last few handholds to crouch beside her on the porous, sandy rock. She chose not to retort to his complaining, instead leading him through the treacherous rocks. It was a warm day, and the sun beat down on their necks. Maggie could smell the sharp bite of salt in the air.

"We're almost there," she promised. "Hey Bucky, I've been wondering something."

His footsteps were light behind her. "Shoot."

"You've lived in the first half of the twentieth century, and now the first half of the twenty-first. Is there anything about today that's really stood out as different?" She hopped over a fossilised tree root.

"Haven't we already talked about this before? Technology, civil rights, uh… aliens, that's pretty new."

She smiled to herself. "How about modern relationships? Are they different from what you're used to?"

"Ah," he said, realizing what she really wanted to talk about. "Well like I said, I didn't really have a lot of serious experience before, I wasn't about to settle down any time soon." Before she could start teasing him again, he continued: "But I've noticed that the way I used to do things – casual dating, I guess you could call it – is a lot more normal. Also people get married later, and do a lot of stuff outside of marriage."

"And how do you feel about that?"

She could feel his smirk, even though she wasn't looking at him. "If the past week is anything to go by then I think you know I'm all for it."

She looked over her shoulder and met his eyes. "You know what I mean."

He didn't get embarrassed at her directness. If anything, his grin grew. "I only want to do what you want to do," he said, pasting on his best attempt at an innocent face. The look was ruined when he tripped over a divot in the rock, and Maggie turned around laughing.

She ducked around the last rocky outcrop and paused, hands on her hips. When Bucky came to a halt by her side, his teasing fell away.

"Meg…"

She'd brought them to a tiny beach carved out of the rock formations by the sea. Gentle foam waves washed up onto the small pocket of white sand, glowing in the sun. It was quiet save for the back-and-forth rush of the ocean, and the distant cawing of seagulls.

"Not a soul for miles around," Maggie murmured, hands still on her hips as she looked around at the enormous rocky structures that made this beach near-inaccessible. A breeze wafted off the ocean, blowing against the dark strands of her hair. She looked up at Bucky's face, and her heart skipped a beat at the soft look in his eyes as he watched the glittering ocean.

She cleared her throat. "I brought you a swim suit, and I promise to maybe not peek when you get changed." She held up her backpack, and grinned when he rolled his eyes at her.

 

* * *

 

Maggie's first step into the water brought with it a flash-memory: an enormous yellow floatie on each arm, her feet bare on the sand, a woman's voice – her  _mother's_ voice – encouraging her to step into the water.

Maggie closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sky, letting the memory wash over her. Mom had taken her to Coney Island beach with a team of nannies, and Jarvis. Mom, elegant in a pale blue one-piece swimsuit and large shades, held her hand as they stepped into the water together. Maggie was scared of the rushing noise of the waves, and the bits of dried seaweed on the sand, but with mom's hand in hers she knew she was safe. After splashing in the shallows a while, mom went to read a magazine on her sunchair, and Jarvis touched up Maggie's sunscreen and bought her an ice cream.

Maggie let out a long breath and looked down at her feet, buried in the sand with the foamy waves washing over them. The sea breeze blew against her bare skin – her swim suit was a high-waisted red bikini, leaving plenty of skin open and vulnerable – and she shivered.

After that first memory came others: the Winter Soldier's footsteps in the sand as he took her to a cold metal dinghy after killing her parents. Being knocked into the cold Canadian ocean by a rocket during a training exercise, and floating in the waves with a charred and smoking chest, certain she was going to drown. The soldier with the curved scar's cold eyes as he sank into the depths. Marino's blood, misting with the ocean spray. Cold waves hundreds of feet below her as she flew to and from missions, blood on her hands.

Bucky didn't make a sound as he joined her at the very edge of the beach, waves washing over his bare feet. He hadn't been so quiet earlier, when he first saw her in her swim suit, but now he seemed to sense her sombre mood.

"What do you remember?" he eventually asked.

Maggie turned to look at him. He wore swimming trunks and – well, she'd provided him with a swimming shirt, but he seemed content to go shirtless. If Maggie was honest with herself, she had to admit that the sight of Bucky bare-chested, flesh and metal on display, dark hair brushing his muscled shoulders, probably disproportionately helped to improve her mood. She must have shown some of this on her face, because he smirked at her.

She rolled her eyes and stepped closer, taking his metal hand in hers. It was hot in the sunlight, but she used the jolt of heat to centre herself.

"I remember too much, sometimes."

Bucky sighed. "I know how that feels."

"Come on." She used her hold on his hand to tug him forward, into the glittering blue water. The sand slid under her feet, tickling her skin and squeaking against the metal plates where her heel spurs emerged from, and she smiled to herself. Before she knew it she was up to her knees, then her hips, then her chest, and she was startled at how  _good_ it felt, to be completely surrounded by water. A glance across at Bucky's face showed that he was echoing her thoughts. His arm whirred slightly as it was submerged, but Maggie knew it was designed to perform underwater.

They reached the point where Maggie could just touch the bottom with her toes, and they faced each other, grinning. Maggie kicked her legs and scooped her arms, relying on her body's instincts to swim – she'd been taught at some point or another, though she couldn't remember exactly when. "I'm swimming!" she beamed at Bucky.

"You sure are." He reached out and caught her, tucking his arms under her legs and behind her back to carry her in the water. "You want to go out further?"

Maggie looked out at the horizon, where the deep, glittering blue of the ocean met the pale blue of the sky. She shook her head. "I don't want to go too far out. The Adamantium on my bones was designed not to sink, but I still… it makes me nervous."

Bucky gripped her tighter, as if afraid she was going to sink right then and there, and he ducked his head to hers. "You're okay here, though?"

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kicked her feet, splashing the surface. "I'm okay here," she beamed up at him, and the kiss he gave her tasted like salt.

They splashed around in the water for the better part of the day, throwing each other into waves and blinking bleary-eyed at the fish under the surface. Perched on Bucky's shoulders under the hot gaze of the sun, Maggie extended and retracted her heel spurs a few times, watching the darting flash of metal underwater. Now that she was free of HYDRA she could fully appreciate how strange her heel spurs were – they were the most obvious sign that she was not what she seemed, besides the metal moorings in her back.

Bucky had his hands on her thighs. He cocked his head thoughtfully as he contemplated her heel spurs. "Reckon you could catch fish with those?"

That made her laugh so hard that she fell off his shoulders, and they spent the next ten minutes trying to use their enhancements – Maggie's heel spurs, and Bucky's silver arm – to catch one of the darting fish in the shallows. But fishermen they were not, and Maggie conceded defeat when she got seaweed caught on her heel spur and had to hop back to shore to free herself.

Bucky followed her, collapsing on his back in the sand and shaking his head like a dog, spraying seawater everywhere. Maggie threw the impaled seaweed at him and it landed with a  _splat_ on his chest.

Instead of retaliating, as she'd expected, Bucky merely flicked the seaweed off and propped himself up on his metal elbow. His grey-blue eyes reflected the glimmering, dancing ocean, and his dark hair dripped onto his shoulders.

Cross-legged on the sand, Maggie's breath hitched in her chest. He looked so at ease, laying on the white sand with one ankle hooked over the other, and his eyes on the ocean. There was stubble on his jaw, and his face was relaxed. This was a man who'd lived through decades of violence and pain, and Maggie felt impossibly lucky to see him like this: comfortable, relaxed, enjoying the view. She realized that she thought he was beautiful, with his long hair and his jaw and his metal arm and his piercing blue eyes.

Almost unconsciously, she reached out. Bucky looked away from the horizon when her fingertips brushed against his metal wrist. She traced the grooves, following the smooth limb up, over the inside of his elbow, brushing her thumb over the blood-red star. The arm whirred, and Maggie sensed Bucky's intense eyes on her face, but she didn't look away. Her fingers found the pearly skin where metal met flesh, and she watched the skin jump under her fingertips. The scarring spread across his chest, ropey tendrils that made her heart ache.

Maggie rolled onto her knees, and her other hand pressed against Bucky's right arm, solid and warm and dusted with sand. Her eyes flickered to his, and she swallowed at the sight of his pupils blown huge, at just the gentle touch of her fingers. She held his gaze for a second longer, and then watched her right hand as it travelled across his chest, mapping collar bones and pectorals and the hard dip of his sternum. Her other hand made its way down his arm, following the ropey muscles and coming to rest lightly on the bones of his wrist.

When she reached the smooth, muscled surface of his stomach, Bucky leaned up and pressed his lips to hers, soft and insistent. Their wet hair tangled around their faces, and Maggie took a sharp breath through her nose when his tongue pressed at the seam of her lips. In the same moment his flesh hand, gritty with sand, rested on her bare waist.

Blood was rushing in her ears, and Maggie's skin crackled where they touched. Her fingernails trailed over Bucky's ribcage and he shivered, sliding his own hand up her waist and across her back, rising and falling over the contours of her wing moorings.

After what could have been seconds or a thousand years, Maggie pulled back with a sigh. Somehow her fingers had made their way to Bucky's hip, and her other hand was pressed against his chest, over his heart. She took a moment to admire him, eyes unfocused and mouth red, his hands on her skin like magic.

"We should go back," she whispered, brushing his hair off his face.

Bucky blinked. "Yeah?"

She grinned, and watched an answering smile cross his lips. "Yeah."

 

* * *

 

Back at the safehouse, Maggie was done with waiting. She and Bucky came together, laughing and gasping and teeth clashing, learning (or re-learning) what their bodies could do. The clothes they'd put on for the hike back came off again the instant the safehouse door shut behind them, and Maggie couldn't bring herself to feel sorry about ripping Bucky's shirt because he was there, under her hands and lips, warm and tasting of salt.

Bucky found the sensitive spot behind her ear with his lips and she gasped, brain shorting out and feet stumbling slightly as she pulled him with her through the safehouse. Bucky caught her, his metal arm clinking against her moorings and making them both laugh breathlessly.

"You're sure?" Bucky asked, because the urgency between them could not be mistaken.

"I'm sure," Maggie breathed, using the brief pause to kick off her shoes. "If you are?" When she looked up, Bucky's eyes were blown black, and she shivered.

"Pretty damn sure," he replied, and Maggie jumped on him. He laughed into her mouth when he caught her, hoisting her legs around his hips. Maggie grinned back, but only for a moment, because then his mouth was on her neck, kissing and teasing and sucking, and she didn't know what her face was doing because her mind was surely in a puddle on the floor.

Somehow they made it into the bedroom, and just before Bucky reached the closest bed Maggie sucked on his pulse point and scraped her fingernails against his scalp. He dropped to his knees, cursing, and Maggie looked up in alarm.

"Alright?"

"Give a guy a little warning," Bucky muttered, eyes dark and voice hoarse, and managed to make it to his feet just long enough to tip them into bed. Maggie laughed into the side of his neck, heart bursting, and then leaned back to help him take her pants off.

"Next time I'll carry you," she decided.

After over a week of learning each other's bodies, neither of them wanted to put off what they both wanted. Maggie thought she might feel vulnerable, completely naked with another person, but it was  _Bucky_ and he gave her that look, like it was the first time he'd ever seen her, and he told her she was beautiful. He didn't look too bad himself.

Maggie had done her research this time, but nothing could prepare her for the real thing. She was constantly surprised by her own body, at the way it jerked and resonated when Bucky touched her for the first time, and at the sounds that came pouring out of her mouth, almost unbidden. Bucky was patient, checking and re-checking and triple-checking that she was okay with each thing he did before he did it, showing her what their bodies could do.

It was messy and uncoordinated at first, and they had to keep up a constant stream of "yes" and "not quite", telling each other what worked and what didn't, what touches were too hard or too soft. But they knew each other well, and when Maggie couldn't express quite how much she enjoyed one move Bucky made with his fingers, he could read it easily enough in her eyes.

Maggie was an enthusiastic learner, and her body thrummed with movements and feelings that had been denied it for too long. It didn't hurt, because they were careful, and after a few moments of just feeling  _weird_ she realised what the fuss was all about. To keep herself from getting overwhelmed she focused on Bucky's pleasure, on what made him shiver and moan and gasp her name. He seemed more concerned with making sure that she was alright, that she was enjoying it, but so far she'd enjoyed just about everything he did to her, and she wanted to know what he liked.

She might have been a little too focused on finding that out, because she brought him to his peak long before she was close, her mouth on his neck as she straddled him, her hips rising and falling against him.

"Meg," he gasped, and she threaded her fingers through his. "Meg, I'm-"

She released his neck but didn't slow down, looking into his eyes. "Let me see you," she whispered, nose brushing his, and he came apart under her, metal arm whirring and his flesh hand clenched on her hip.

Maggie was fascinated, and her heart pounded with pride and affection and her own pleasure, a pleasant burn in the pit of her stomach. She'd never seen something so beautiful as Bucky's open mouth and closed eyes and dishevelled hair.

She rested her elbows on either side of his chest and waited for him to come back to himself a little, chest heaving and sweat glistening on his skin. He opened his grey-blue eyes, and the sight of him so  _unravelled_  made her shiver.

One moment he was looking up at her, and the next she was on her back, his mouth on her neck and his hands on her chest. "Bucky," she breathed, suddenly overwhelmed, but she didn't want him to stop.

"So good," he murmured into her collarbone, his flushed face trailing across her skin, dropping kisses. "You're amazing, Meg, wanna make you feel good."

" _Bucky_." He'd reached her abdomen now, and Maggie fumbled for a grip on the bedframe over her head, searching for support, because she was certain she was about to shake out of her own skin with pleasure.

Bucky showed her what his mouth remembered, pleasure she'd only read about, sensation she could never have imagined. Her legs shook, slung over Bucky's shoulders, and her hips moved restlessly until his metal arm reached around to hold her down. Her blood sang and her nerves danced, and Maggie knew in that moment that with natural instincts such as these, people were never meant to be made into weapons.

When Bucky brought her to her peak, she crushed the bedframe in her hand. The splintering  _crack_ was a distant thought, unimportant, because her body was  _alive._ She was conscious of nothing but Bucky and her own pleasure, the thumping heartbeat in her ears.

Maggie faded back into her body who knew how much later, to the sound of Bucky chuckling in her ear, and a fistful of splintered wood.

"Oops," she said, startled at the huskiness to her voice, and dusted her hands off over the side of the bed. She rolled back to the sight of Bucky, gorgeous and  _there_ beside her, his grey-blue eyes on hers. Maggie spared a glance for the destroyed bedframe, judged that it probably wouldn't affect the structural integrity of the bed, and then scooted over to Bucky, throwing her sweaty limbs over his and dropping her head on the pillow beside him.

"Sorry about the bed," she hummed, feeling tingles wash up her body.

Bucky's metal arm, wedged under her torso, whirred. "I'm just glad it wasn't my head," he smiled back, and reached up with his flesh hand to push her sweaty locks off her forehead.

She winced. "I promise I was trying to be careful."

"You were careful with me," he said, and leaned over to kiss her. "Besides, for your first time, I'd say a bedframe is a small price to pay."

Maggie grinned, her cheeks still flushed. "You know, I read Dr Erskine's notes on the original super soldier serum."

Bucky blinked at the non-sequitur. "Interesting read?"

"Mm, very. One of his predictions was that the refractory period of serum recipients would be significantly shorter than standard humans." She grinned as comprehension crossed Bucky's face. "Though I don't know if anyone ever bothered trying to work out if his prediction was correct. Did Steve ever tell you about his refractory period?" she asked, her face the picture of innocence.

Bucky rolled his eyes and in an instant flipped her onto her back, hovering over her. "You're a menace," he said, ducking down to capture her lips in a kiss.

 

* * *

 

A few days later, Maggie lifted her head from her pillow and squinted at Bucky.

"You're good at this," she said.

He rolled to look at her, still a little breathless and too tired to lift his head up. "You're not too bad yourself," he grinned.

"Thank you," Maggie preened. "But I mean, you know how to do this."

"Well, I had some practice, before everything…"

She sat up. "With who?"

His eyebrows rose. "Meg, are you jealous?"

She thought about it for a moment, and then her face broke open in a smile. "Yes," she said, and her smile grew. "I don't think I've ever been jealous before."

He laughed, and when she dropped her head by his again he brushed her hair behind her ear. "Well, congratulations, I think." His eyes crinkled. "Do you really want to hear about the women I dated before?"

"I already know about some of them, but you've never told me their names, only their hair colors." She knocked her knee into his, and her mouth fell open in mock indignation. "Do you even know my name, Bucky? Do you only think of me as 'the brunette'?"

"Damn, you caught me," he said, rolling his eyes. "But don't think that I haven't noticed that you introduce yourself to strangers as  _Maggie_ , and not Meg. What's that about?"

"Well it just sounds so much better than 'the brunette'," she sighed, and then squawked when he pinched her hip. "Alright! Uh, well I told you that pretty soon after remembering the name  _Margaret_ I remembered that my family called me  _Maggie_ , and I don't know… I just prefer it, I guess. It's how I think of myself."

Bucky's face fell. "Why didn't you tell me? I can call you Maggie."

She smiled at the sound of her name on his lips. "I know. But I liked that Meg was the name you gave me. I didn't really want you to stop, even once I remembered what my nickname was."

That made his face soften. "So you want me to keep calling you Meg?"

"Please."

"Alright then, brunette."

Maggie leaped onto his chest and dug her fingers into the spot on his ribs where she knew he was ticklish.

 

* * *

 

A few mornings later, Maggie tried to explain what it was like spending her whole adult life under HYDRA, with her every biological instinct suppressed. They were curled together in bed, noses touching. Bucky's hand was warm in her hair, and his metal arm was a comforting weight, but the memories still made her feel cold.

"I definitely… I noticed people," she whispered. "I knew that people – targets – experienced attraction, and formed romantic pairings, but it wasn't ever something that was on the table for me. After a long time out of a wipe I sometimes started to notice the people around me – usually technicians, or targets, or innocent bystanders. I even noticed you a couple of times, towards the end." She swallowed. "But I didn't understand it, and I knew there was nothing I could ever do about it. A weapon wasn't supposed to feel."

Bucky pressed his lips to her forehead, and when he pulled away his eyes were blazing. "You're not a weapon," he said, and his voice shook with emotion. "You're a  _person_ , one of the best and strongest I know."

 

* * *

 

Bucky eventually did get around to telling her about his ex-girlfriends, as they sat at a fish and chip shop by the beach.

"You know," Maggie said, tracing a finger through the condensation on her soda glass, "Since we're, uh, talking about this… I should probably mention that I kissed one of those girls we were dancing with, in that club in Townsville."

Bucky reached for another chip. "The one in the pink shirt that said  _Brains, Beauty, Booty_? Yeah, I think I saw."

Maggie blushed. "You saw, um, one of the kisses."

His eyes widened, and his hand froze halfway to his mouth. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I was curious, so I asked her if I could kiss her, and then I… did." She could see Bucky processing the information, and she pointed a chip accusingly at him. "At the time I was trying to stop being so keen on you."

He thought about that for a little while, bringing the chip to his mouth and chewing on it slowly. "Did it work?" he eventually asked.

"I enjoyed it," she said thoughtfully, "but no."

Bucky cocked his head. "So, women, huh?"

She grinned. "Yes. And men. But mostly you."

He leaned across the cheap plastic table and kissed her, his five-day-old beard brushing against her chin.

 

* * *

 

Their life as a couple was much like it had been before – they tried things that people did, they went for walks and coffees and kept up their therapies. But now, as Maggie had predicted, there was exponentially more kissing. And other things.

They were always conscious that they were on the run, that this was by no means an ordinary existence. But it was nice to have each other, to be people. They were still very much in what Maggie's research described as the 'honeymoon phase', wrapped up in each other's touch and eyes and smile.

They had a few fights, mostly small disagreements sparked by tiredness, or resistance to a particular kind of therapy, but after taking some space they were able to work it out easily.

They stayed in Karratha for a month and a half, in their tin-rooved safehouse. Bucky took up an unskilled labour job at a processing plant and Maggie worked in data entry at the town's only pathology lab, using her off hours to learn more about science in practice and surreptitiously using the lab equipment for her own experiments. Their jobs were boring but helped them to blend in, and they even earned some real-life, legitimate money (mostly legitimate – they had fudged their CVs and all their details, after all). This time around they were Megan Sawyer and John Burnett, hard-working US expats struggling in the difficult economy.

They didn't get too close to the locals, but they exchanged 'hi's and 'how was your weekend?'s with their co-workers, and the local barista knew their coffee orders.

They went on 'dates', to local restaurants or the library, sometimes a couple of hikes through the beautiful national parks. Once they went to bingo in honor of Beatrice, who had given Maggie relationship advice not so long ago, and Bucky put up with Maggie's endless teasing about finally hanging out with people his own age.

 

* * *

 

One morning, as they shoveled bowls of cereal into their mouths to sustain their super-soldier metabolisms, Bucky looked up at Maggie with a frown.

"What?" she asked, and reached up to her face. "Have I got cereal on my nose again?"

"No, it's…" he cocked his head. "I guess it's just hitting me how much you've had to figure out on your own. You've never really… asked me, about…" he gestured between them, a blush rising on his face.

It took her a moment, but once she realised what he was talking about, a wicked grin lifted her lips. She leaned across the table, glanced around as if there might be someone else in their safehouse who could overhear, and then whispered " _Sexual encounters_?" with the tone of a scandalised high-schooler.

Her teasing usually made him more embarrassed or made him roll his eyes, and today seemed to be the latter. "Yeah," he said, through another mouthful of cereal. "You, uh, kinda have a handle on things."

She shrugged. "Well like I said before, I knew more or less about the mechanics of it all from an early age. They taught us at the Red Room." His eyes darkened at the mention of that place – she'd told him about her memories. " _And_ ," Maggie continued, "ever since I figured out why you were getting me all hot and bothered, I've been doing research."

Bucky choked on his cereal. "Tell me you haven't been reading dirty magazines."

"Well the most common go-to today is actually video pornography," she explained, taking a sip of her coffee, "but my research showed me that that's rarely an accurate depiction of sexual relationships."

Bucky looked completely floored as she continued to talk about her research over breakfast, explaining everything from the sexual revolution, to the wide range of birth control methods, to consent. After his initial surprise he seemed to warm up to the conversation, asking questions and expressing amazement at how much had changed since his time.

As they washed their dishes in the kitchen, Bucky smiled at her during her detailed explanation of the science behind reproductive hormones, complete with the names of prominent scientists in the field.

Eventually, she realised that his smile had softened into a familiar dopey look. "What?"

His eyes crinkled. "I like it when you robot talk about stuff."

"Robot talk?"

"Yeah, like… 'there's currently a 70-1 pi ratio chance that Bucky's about to kiss me'-" he towelled off his soapy hands and leaned in toward her.

She laughed, ducking sideways. "That doesn't even make mathematical sense!"

"Mmm, robot talk," he hummed, catching her by the fridge and leaning in to kiss her neck.

Maggie's hands found their way into his hair. "You should know better."

"Well I graduated high school eighty years ago, give a guy a break," he said against her throat.

Maggie tilted her head to give him easier access. "I didn't even graduate fourth grade."

He leaned back at that, hands on her hips. "I thought you were  _five_  when… when HYDRA happened."

She cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed with the lack of kissing happening to her neck. "I was."

He thought about it. "Is that normal nowadays? Do kids start school super early or something?"

"No, it's not normal," Maggie sighed, and she leaned back against the fridge. "I was a lot smarter than kids my age, so they kept bumping me up. Didn't make a lot of friends my age." She huffed a laugh. "Tony had this robot, Dum-E, I saw  _it_  as my friend, more than the kids at school."

"Huh."

Maggie cocked her head, and levelled her gaze on him. "I'm not smart because of what HYDRA did," she explained. "They wanted me because I was smart." At that she had to break eye contact, because suddenly there were tears brimming in her eyes. She folded her arms across her stomach and frowned, remembering the Wyvern Project, and the test scores and school reports of hers that they'd collected before they sent the Winter Soldier after her. She hadn't had a chance.

Bucky wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed her damp eyes into his shirt.

"Well," he eventually said, "We'll have to get you back to school."

She laughed tearfully. "And enrol as who, Margaret Stark? The Wyvern?"

He pressed a kiss on the top of her head, and she sighed at the feeling. "We'll work something out."

 

* * *

 

April 28th, 2015  
Perth, Australia

It turned out, Bucky's answer to 'getting her back to school,' was to take her to a university. They left Karratha after a month and a half and travelled south to Perth, where they could lose themselves in the crowd.

On their second day, Bucky coaxed Maggie out of their safehouse and onto a bus, merely smiling at her repeated whispers of "I don't  _like_ surprises, Bucky, I'm a highly volatile, mentally unstable ex-assassin!"

But when they got off the bus by the signs for the university, with the old, austere buildings and the more modern complexes, Maggie's mouth fell open.

" _Bucky_."

"You're not enrolled or anything," he said, taking her hand and leading her into the flood of students with bursting backpacks. "But I figured we could sneak into a few lectures for free."

At that, Maggie tore her eyes away from a sandstone building with mossy arches and a clocktower. "So we're stealing education, now?" Her tone was vaguely reprimanding, but her eyes were alight.

He shrugged. "Sure. But if anyone's going to appreciate it, it's you, Meg." He squeezed her hand. "Let's have a look around, but there's a lecture in…" he craned his neck to look at the clocktower, "twenty minutes that I think you'll like."

Maggie and Bucky strolled through the university hand-in-hand, pointing out the beautiful buildings, the enormous library, the glimpses they could see of labs and classrooms. Bucky hadn't had the money to go to college when he was younger, though he'd excelled in school. As they walked down a wide path, blending with the other casually dressed students enjoying the sun, Bucky explained that he'd been saving up to go to college, but then the war arrived and other things took precedence.

"What would you have studied?"

"I don't know," he shrugged, smiling sadly. "I was good at math and science in school. But the guy who wanted all of that… I don't know if I'm him anymore."

Maggie hugged his arm to her side. "It doesn't matter which version of yourself you are," she said. "You're a person, and you can do what you want."

He smiled down at her. "I guess. But what about you? What would you study, if you had the chance?" He was leading them toward the main sandstone building now, for the lecture he'd mentioned.

Maggie's eyes went wide. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know a lot about these places."

Bucky studied her for a moment, then laughed. "I don't know either, they might have to invent a new degree for you. 'Bachelor of Everything.'" She smiled, and he held the door of the lecture hall open for her.

It was a huge space, with hundreds of seats rising in rows – already half filled with students – and a wide dais with a desk and a projector screen. Maggie blinked at it all, startled, until Bucky nudged the small of her back. They took seats up the back of the lecture theatre, both to prevent them being noticed, and because it was closer to the emergency exit. Maggie set her backpack between her feet, feeling the reassuring weight of her wings, and then glanced around at the other students. The room hummed with low murmurs and the tap of keyboards.

"Bucky," she whispered, and he looked up from where he was inspecting the fold-out desk for his chair. "Everyone else has a computer or a notebook, I don't have anything!"

He grinned at her, shaking his head. "Do you need it?"

She thought about it. "Probably not. But-"

"You'll be fine," he said, and reached out to take her hand.

Seconds later, the lecturer – a tall, gangly woman with enormous spectacles – blew into the room, setting up her notes and her prepared PowerPoint presentation in a whirl.

"Sorry I'm late everyone!" she breathed. "Welcome back to Week Ten of Mechanical Engineering. Let's get started with our discussion of mechatronics."

Maggie didn't even have time to turn to Bucky to show her excitement – she was hanging on to the lecturer's every word.

 

* * *

 

They walked out of the lecture theater an hour later, mingling with the flood of students. Maggie's mind was whirling – she'd already known pretty much all the theory, even though it was a fifth-year class, but they'd talked about practical applications and latest trends in the field, and everything they'd said had called to the part of Maggie that was hungry for knowledge.

"So you liked it?" Bucky asked, when she stopped for breath.

Maggie gaped at him and tried to express with aborted hand gestures just how much she'd enjoyed it. She settled for reaching up and kissing him on the cheek. " _Thank you_ ," she said.

He smiled at her. "You belong here. Or a place like it. It really suits you."

Maggie smiled back and looked around at the rows of classrooms in the corridor they were walking down. "I do like it. The idea that there are whole buildings – whole blocks of buildings! – dedicated to teaching people, that's… really amazing. But I can't  _stay_ somewhere like this," she finished, and had to look away from Bucky's soft, sympathetic eyes.

They walked in silence for a few moments, and Maggie distracted herself by trying to absorb everything she could about the university before they left. That was why she spotted the TV screen mounted in the middle of a walkway, displaying the weather and news headlines.

Against all her training that told her to blend in, to restrain her emotions, Maggie froze.

" _Bucky_ ," she breathed.

The major news story showed an image of a smoking, ruined white stone fortress. The headline read:  _The End of HYDRA: Avengers Secure Sokovian HYDRA Research Base, Arrest Wolfgang von Strucker._

Bucky froze by her side. "Holy shit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I once had strings, but now I'm free... there are no strings on me!


	32. Chapter 32

_Could it really be over?_

That was what all the news outlets, governments, and intelligence agencies around the world seemed to think: with the fall of the Sokovian Research Base, HYDRA was finished.

Bucky and Maggie had rushed back to their safehouse, and now they were both hunched over computers, trying to find out everything about the engagement in Sokovia.

Maggie  _knew_ HYDRA. They loved infiltration, growing quiet and lethal in the shadows.  _Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place._ Was it possible that the Avengers had cut off the final head?

She could see the same war between hope and cynicism in Bucky's eyes – it was dangerous to assume that HYDRA had been completely wiped from the world. And yet, they hadn't heard of hide nor hair of HYDRA for a long time. They'd set up multiple bank accounts full of stolen HYDRA money that would last them a long time, but all the old HYDRA accounts had been found and deactivated. It seemed that once they were exposed to the world, HYDRA had gained an expiration date. It was very likely that the only ones left were people like Vincent Silva, rats who jumped from the ship and went into hiding, leaving HYDRA to burn.

When she thought that, Maggie smiled despite herself. Did that make she and Bucky rats?

She looked up at their safehouse TV, which showed non-stop news coverage of the base's capture.

She frowned. "I think I've been there before."

Bucky looked up from where he'd been monitoring the various "Avengers-Watch" websites and social media accounts. "Sokovia?"

"That research base…" she bit her lip. An image of Baron Strucker popped up, with his shaven head and ominous monocle. "I remember him, he reminded me of the Project Leader."

Bucky shifted closer to her on the couch. "What were you there for?"

Pain flashed behind Maggie's eyes, and she winced. "They wiped me right before and right after, it's all blurry. There was a weapon…" she frowned at the memory of a glowing blue stone. "And civilians." The gaggle of faces, frightened by the sight of the Wyvern. Maggie's stomach sank. "Strucker was involved in human experimentation, they were probably all…" She put a hand to her mouth, and squeezed her eyes shut. More victims, more blood on HYDRA's hands, and she'd just walked past. Bucky put his hand on her shoulder.

"They got him, Meg," he murmured. "He's not going to do that to anyone else."

Maggie opened her eyes. The TV was showing shaky action footage of the Avengers now, and her breath hitched at the sight of Iron Man arcing through the sky, dodging plumes of blue cannon fire. The footage cut to Captain America, presumably after the base had been taken, escorting a bound Strucker to local authorities. She felt Bucky tense minutely, and she leaned into him.

"They're a good team," she said, as another clip played of Captain America and Iron Man stepping onto a Quinjet together. She smiled.

"They are," Bucky agreed. "I don't know if we could've gotten into that base. Alien tech, dozens of troops, an energy shield… they're crazy."

Maggie kicked her feet up. "We would have worked something out."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, I'd put you inside a really big wooden horse-" Bucky cut her off with his hands in her hair and his mouth on hers, laughing into the kiss.

After a long moment, he pressed his forehead against hers and sighed. "They got 'em."

His eyes were closed, but Maggie could sense the memories swirling around his head. He'd been in the fight against HYDRA from the beginning, a fresh-faced sergeant from Brooklyn. And now his friend had swung the final blow.

Maggie stroked his cheek. "Bucky, you know… this doesn't mean we can stop hiding." He opened his eyes and she looked into them searchingly.

"I know," he sighed, pulling her closer to him on the couch. "Just because HYDRA as an organisation is gone doesn't mean there aren't people out there who know our words."

She tucked her head under his chin. "As far as the world knows, we don't exist, or we're myths, or we're dead. From what I can tell, most intelligence agencies have given up looking, or believing."

"And the Avengers?" Bucky murmured, as they watched frankly terrifying footage of the Hulk tearing through soldiers. Maggie had read Dr Banner's research papers, and it was hard imagining that measured, logical scientist as this furious beast of wrath.

Maggie huffed a laugh. "I'm not stupid enough to try hacking  _their_ computers. But… Steve knows you're alive. And he doesn't seem like the kind to give up."

"He's not," Bucky sighed. "But I just  _know_ if he finds me, someone will try to use me against him." Maggie pressed her palm against his chest. "What about your brother?"

They'd talked about this, over and over, but Maggie had no way of knowing if her brother knew she was alive. Mostly she suspected he didn't, but it always came back to the destruction of that base in Canada…

She shrugged. "I don't know." Her voice was barely a whisper. The more she remembered about her life before HYDRA and the more she came into her own as a person, the more she  _missed_ Tony. He was one of the last people left alive who had known her, loved her. She knew almost every publicly available fact about him, had seen all his press appearances and footage of his battles. She couldn't watch the press conference after his kidnapping in Afghanistan, when he announced the end of Stark Industries' weapons production, without getting teary-eyed. She was proud of him, of what he'd achieved and what he stood for: the Iron Avenger, protecting the world. Dad had always said he'd had so much potential.

Maggie wrapped her arms around Bucky, and they watched the world celebrate the Avengers' victory over HYDRA.

 

* * *

 

April 30th, 2015  
Avengers Tower, New York City

Deep in a haze of science with Bruce, Tony's brain was occupied with little else. But when they took a break to run a simulation, or rehash their notes, he couldn't shake off the vision – or hallucination – he'd seen at the Sokovian base. The cold darkness, the horde of leviathans closing in on the gleaming blue Earth, the pile of his slain friends. The crushing guilt, the  _inadequacy._

Maggie's small body lying broken at his feet, with metal on her bones. Her brown eyes, once alight with questions, were cold and sightless.

Steve's dying gasp:  _Why didn't you do more?_

Tony shrugged off the image and returned to his work on the scepter. Hunting down HYDRA had been a good way to get his mind off his utter failure in finding his sister, but now they were gone he needed something – needed this, the next step.

He knew Wilson and J.A.R.V.I.S. weren't going to stop looking, but Tony… Tony had run out of ideas. He had nothing but guesses, a vault of data on the Wyvern that he'd locked himself out of, and a three second video of a woman who might be her. The more time that passed since that terrible night in his labs when the DNA results came back, the more Tony realized just how much he'd failed. He'd failed Maggie when she was just a kid, and he'd failed her every day she was alone in the world with who knew what memories for company. He'd read everything he could about the Memory Suppression Machine, and he didn't know if recovery from that kind of torture was possible.

"Tony?"

He flinched and looked up. It was Bruce, eyeing him with concern from across the lab.

Bruce knew about Maggie. He'd supervised the exhumation and autopsy of the Jane Doe in Maggie's grave. They didn't talk much about it, just like they didn't talk about Betty, but Bruce asked for updates on the search from time to time. He was an odd guy, Bruce, but he understood Tony's struggle on some level. Bruce knew about living with demons.

Tony knew that if he asked Bruce for his help, he would give it.

That hadn't kept Bruce from shooting him knowing glances as Tony tried to convince him to work on Ultron.  _The only thing threatening the planet would be people_ , Bruce had said, and his calm eyes had betrayed what he was thinking.

There was a similar look in his eyes now, as Tony rolled his shoulders and got back to work.

"Need a break?" Bruce eventually asked, his voice mellow.

"Nah," Tony said. "We've got work to do."

He might not have been able to protect his sister, but he was damn well going to protect the world.

 

* * *

 

May 2nd, 2015  
Perth, Australia

Maggie and Bucky had spent the last three days settling into their new safehouse, and dealing with the influx of emotions that came with the 'End of HYDRA'.

But then came the news of an attack on Avengers Tower. Bucky and Maggie found themselves glued to the TV and computer screens again, desperately searching for any information they could. The media seemed curious about reports of destruction in Avengers Tower, sounds of glass breaking and gunshots, but Bucky and Maggie were scared. There'd been no news about fatalities, but the Avengers hadn't been seen since.

"Could it be HYDRA?" Maggie asked late into the night, as she flicked through tweets about the attack. "Whoever's left of it anyway, getting revenge?"

"But who would have the resources to attack  _Avengers Tower_?" Bucky asked. And that was what it came down to – anyone with that skill level would be on dozens of threat watch lists.

In a fit of desperation, Maggie tried to hack into the tower itself. She'd never been so bold before, determined to hide in the shadows, but her brother's home had been attacked and she didn't know if he was alive.

"That's… odd," she eventually murmured.

"Hm?"

"It's dead." She glanced up at Bucky and met his confused look with one of her own. "The tower, the Avengers' data, it's all down." She dug deeper, hiding her tracks the whole way, and realized that whatever had happened in Avengers Tower, a cyber attack had occurred at the same time. Then she started to see the signs of some kind of intelligence working through the data at impossible speeds, erasing and changing and  _thinking_. Maggie didn't understand, but she saw enough to be scared. She wiped away her digital tracks, closed off all connection with the tower, and destroyed her tech. Bucky raised an eyebrow at the loss of the computer, but he didn't protest.

"Intelligence agencies have picked up some kind of new threat," he said, lifting the tablet in his hands. "Metal men, hitting weapons facilities and all kinds of robotics and engineering labs. There's too many of them to keep track, and there's signs of enhanced humans as well. Strucker's been killed."

"Jesus," Maggie breathed, still thinking about the insidious intelligence she'd seen in the data. "What have they got themselves into?"

 

* * *

 

The next day, Maggie's eyes snapped open from a fitful nap to new headlines about the Avengers:  _JOHANNESBURG DISASTER: IRON MAN AND THE HULK LEVEL BUILDINGS, DESTROY INFRASTRUCTURE IN DUEL._

"Oh god."

Maggie watched with her heart in her mouth as her brother, in some kind of bulky, enhanced Iron Man armor, was beaten into the ground by a furious, roaring Hulk. Bucky appeared behind the couch and put his flesh hand on her shoulder. As they watched, the TV showed cellphone footage of Iron Man seizing the Hulk and throwing him through the air.

"He's crazy," Maggie breathed, her voice hoarse with leftover sleep and panic. "He's just a man."

Her breath hitched in her throat as Iron Man and the Hulk levelled a building, leaving behind a cloud of dust. A news anchor came onto screen, explaining that that was the end of the duel, and that Iron Man had flown an unconscious Hulk away from the scene.

Maggie sensed Bucky shift his weight. "Are you okay?" His hand was warm on her shoulder.

"I…" She watched the footage of the fight as it replayed over and over. Her heart leaped into her mouth at the devastating punches Hulk had been raining down on the Iron Man armor. "He's  _alive,_ but… I thought they were friends."

Bucky didn't seem to know what to say to that. He stepped around the couch and sat beside her, watching the TV. All the news anchors seemed to agree that the Avengers had gone into hiding. In the part of her mind that wasn't inwardly screaming at the image of her brother standing up against the  _Hulk_ , Maggie was almost fascinated by the shifts in public opinion: at first there was confusion, then fear, and then…

An interview with a red-faced woman aired a few hours later, in which she called for the Avengers to be arrested and then sent to prison. She called them  _monsters_ , and  _cowards._

Bucky turned off the TV.

Silence filled their safehouse, and Maggie felt sick.

"What do we do?" she asked.

Bucky didn't have an answer for her. He slid his hand into hers and they sat together in silence. Maggie didn't know what he was thinking, but she suddenly found herself very conscious of how many miles likely lay between her and her brother. She thought those miles were there for his protection, but she – and the rest of the world – had just seen how vulnerable the Avengers could be. And Maggie didn't know how to help.

 

* * *

 

May 5th, 2015  
Perth, Australia

There were days of public uproar, with nothing but silence from the Avengers.

Maggie had been doing what she could from her small corner of the world on her newly bought laptop: she boosted cyber security for organisations that needed it in the Avenger's absence, assisted another mysterious presence who was protecting nuclear launch codes, and monitored major threats. She was an unseen, often unnoticed digital presence, flickering around the edges of the world's major players. Bucky plied her with food and coffee, while he followed his own lines of investigation into where the Avengers might be.

Now, Maggie's fingers froze over her laptop.

"Captain America's been sighted in South Korea!" she called.

Bucky rushed into the room, and they watched the emerging news about metal men fighting Captain America and a Quinjet in the streets of Seoul. Bucky's face was grim as he watched shaky footage of his friend leaping between moving vehicles and exchanging blows with some kind of metal man.

Maggie hacked into the South Korean police units to try to figure out what was going on, but before she got any answers the Avengers were gone again, leaving a derailed train and a trail of destruction in their wake.

"Whatever's happening," Maggie murmured, her body taut with the stress of the past few days, "they're not handling it."

Bucky's metal hand clenched and unclenched. "It's that robot thing, that's what they're fighting. Can you get any information on it?"

Maggie's fingers stilled over her laptop. "Bucky, whatever it is… it's smarter than me. It's  _faster_ than me. It's not just a robot, it's in the Internet, around the whole world, simultaneously. I've been spending half my time just trying to hide my tracks. If I come at it directly we'll have metal men on our doorstep in  _minutes._ "

That seemed to bring the situation home to Bucky. He stilled, and something like desperation filled his eyes. "That's what they're trying to fight?"

She nodded, and some of the tension left her body when he pulled her into his arms. "If it helps," she breathed into his shirt, "I think they've got a plan. The Avengers captured some kind of crate in Seoul, and there's been signs of activity back at Avengers Tower."

Bucky exhaled, his breath ruffling her hair. She pressed further into his warmth, and his arm tightened around her waist.

"We should be there," he eventually murmured, and she could feel how much it hurt him to admit it.

She tipped her head back to look up at him. "No," she sighed. "We  _want_ to be there. But if anyone's going to be able to use our trigger words against us, it's an omnipresent artificial intelligence with what sounds like an enhanced telepath on his side."

They both took a moment to let that sink in. Maggie hated herself for admitting it, but she and Bucky could only be a liability in this kind of fight. The idea of someone getting into her head again, using her brain and her skills against Tony…

She wouldn't allow it to happen.

 

* * *

 

May 6th, 2015  
Perth, Australia

Maggie and Bucky watched in horror as a whole city rose into the sky. It was quiet in their safehouse, save for the news anchor frantically narrating the situation.

Maggie didn't know how the news anchor found words within himself to speak – this was like nothing that had ever happened before, and she could only watch, still and silent, as the world hung in the balance.

She could guess the artificial intelligence's plan. She wondered when it planned to cut the engines and drop Novi Grad back on Earth. She wondered how long she and Bucky would have together before the resulting shock waves obliterated them. Minutes? Seconds? The calculations running through her mind weren't comforting at all.

Her hand was in Bucky's, near-crushing his with the strength of her grip, but he didn't say a word. His grip was just as tight.

Maggie knew the implications of Novi Grad returning to Earth, but she couldn't stop thinking about her brother and his friends, up there in the sky. Still trying to save the world.

When the city dropped, Maggie couldn't help the sob that bubbled up her throat and out of her mouth, or the tears that spilled down her cheeks. Bucky leaned in closer to her, and she felt his heart pounding.

But then: a beacon of blue light and crackling lightning, as the incoming comet exploded. Maggie took a shuddering gasp, and reached up to wipe away her tears so she could see what was happening: debris fell from the sky, rock and buildings and fire, plunging into the ocean and ground below. The live news feed showed people screaming and running.

Maggie went cold. The Avengers had won, the world had been saved. But she couldn't see Iron Man.

Hand in hand, Bucky and Maggie watched the TV for hours. The news went crazy, talking about the artificial intelligence called Ultron, the battle in Novi Grad, the stories of rescue and bravery as the survivors were returned to the ground.

Bucky and Maggie didn't know what to say.

Then, finally, a S.H.I.E.L.D. spokesperson (because apparently, S.H.I.E.L.D. was back) reported that all of the Avengers had survived, save for a new recruit called Pietro Maximoff.

It was like a switch had been flicked in the safehouse. Bucky and Maggie took in a simultaneous, shuddering breath and threw their arms around each other, pressing skin against skin and crying into each other's hair.

"They made it," Bucky said, rubbing soothing circles into their back. "They're fucking crazy, but they made it."

Maggie laughed at that, and felt her muscles shaking with relief. "They're a good team," she sighed.  _They're alive. He's alive._

 

Hours later, after monitoring the news on Sokovia and the Avengers, Maggie turned to Bucky.

"We might not be able to be there," she said, meeting his grey-blue eyes. "But we can be close. We  _should_ be close."

Bucky looked around at the apartment, warm and safe. They hadn't left in days, instead taking shifts on the couch watching the TV, or using the laptop. He nodded. "You're right."

Decision made, they began packing up once more. As Maggie reached around Bucky to pick up the laptop, she let her hand trail along his shoulder. After they climbed out of the kitchen window, Bucky rested his hand at the small of her back.

The next time the Avengers came up against something they couldn't handle, Bucky and Maggie would be close enough to do something about it. Just in case.

 

* * *

 

May 28th, 2015  
New Avengers Facility, New York

Tony was going to miss Thor. Of course he didn't say that to his face, instead choosing to crack wise about the hammer.

Tony remembered when Thor had come back to Earth in search of Loki's scepter after the whole deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. He was a loud guy, a fighter, but he wasn't stupid. So he'd noticed that Steve and Tony had their minds on something else other than the scepter. When they pulled him aside to explain the whole evil assassin deal, he'd been startlingly sympathetic. Well, Tony supposed he knew what it was like to have a sibling who'd done bad shit.

"I am sorry that this has happened to you, my friends," Thor had said, clapping his hands on their shoulders with enough force to bruise – well, bruise Tony, anyway. "I wish you the best of luck in finding your sister, Stark, and Steven I wish you the best of luck in finding your brother."

Steve had started at that. "Oh, he's not-"

But Thor just gave him a significant look. "Call on me if you ever need my help." He'd squeezed their shoulders, making Tony wince. "I have an email now."

Now, as Steve walked Tony to his car outside the newly-built facility, Tony reflected on all the changes they'd made – Bruce and Thor were gone, in their various ways, but they'd gained four new Avengers. Some real heavy hitters too, what with Vision and Wanda. It wasn't the armor around the world that Tony had envisioned, but it was somehow better.

Wilson was still searching for Maggie and Barnes, with F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help, though he'd have less time on his hands now he was training to be an Avenger. Natasha was always there to offer silent, scary support; Barton more or less knew the situation but kept his nose out of it; and Rhodey knew too. Tony sometimes caught Rhodey looking at old newspaper clippings of Maggie, with a hollow look in his eyes.

Tony was… retiring. Kind of. He and Steve had talked a lot about the future of the Avengers, and Tony just didn't see himself training newbies and running missions. So he built a fancy new facility, and he was going to split his time between it and Avengers Tower, or following Pepper around while she kicked ass at running Stark Industries.

Tony drove away, and watched Steve walk back into the facility in his rear-view mirror. In amongst their discussions about the Avengers, they'd sat down with a bottle of scotch and pulled up the CCTV still of the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier, their backs to the camera as they walked away from the burning HYDRA facility in D.C.

"I'm not going to stop searching," Steve had said, his eyes earnest as if he needed to prove something to Tony.

"And all these years I've been thinking you were a 'giving up' type of person," Tony said, taking a swig of scotch. It burned – he didn't drink so much, nowadays.

Steve had opened his mouth again, but Tony kept talking: "F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s on it, just like J.A.R.V.I.S. was, and Wilson said he's going to keep chasing down leads. We get anything fresh, we'll follow it up. They can't hide forever."

There was a long silence after that. Tony hadn't meant to say that last part, he generally tried not to think about the fact that it was so impossible to find her – _them_ – was a sign that they were dead, or trying very hard not to be found.

"We'll keep looking," Tony had eventually said. "But it can't be the only thing we do." The past year had taught him that – he couldn't be an Avenger, squash HYDRA, search for Maggie  _and_  give Pepper the time she deserved. So he'd cut it down to two out of four, and he could fit in being a genius inventor and philanthropist in his spare time.

As he drove out of the facility in his orange sportscar, Tony smiled to himself.  _The simple life._ He might not ever get it, but that wouldn't stop him trying.

 

* * *

 

Eight thousand miles away, Margaret Stark traveled north through India with Bucky Barnes, with nothing but a backpack of junk and a pair of metal wings to her name. Her brother was alive, and HYDRA was gone. She knew she'd never have the simple life, but she had more happiness in her life than she'd ever thought was possible.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could have included more Bruce and Thor in this story, but the stars haven't aligned in that way!
> 
> Let me know what you thought :)


	33. Chapter 33

Bucky and Maggie's second year on the run was much like their first, but they were doing so much better. They were still ravaged by nightmares and guilt, but they could keep their heads above water now – not fixed, but stable.

They travelled up through India, through the war-torn Middle East, and into Europe. They wanted to be close to major world events, but the U.S. was still too risky for them. They split up sometimes, though neither of them liked it.

It was a hard year filled with remorse, recalls of traumatic memories, and missing their dead and distant loved ones.

But they had each other. And they were certainly never bored.

 

* * *

 

June, 2015  
New Delhi, India

A month after Ultron's defeat, Maggie and Bucky strolled down the colourful disarray of a New Delhi main street, letting the rushing traffic and low roar of conversation flow over them.

Bucky's covered-up metal arm was slung over Maggie's shoulder, and he bowed his head to whisper in her ear. She smacked him and he grinned at her, all teeth and crinkling eyes.

"I need a nickname for you," Maggie decided, as they pushed through the press of bodies.

"You do realise that Bucky is already a nickname?"

She scrunched up her nose. It was weird to think of Bucky as  _James._ Just like it was weird whenever he jokingly called her  _Margaret_. "But you call me doll, I feel like I should have something like that."

"You could call me doll, I wouldn't mind."

She elbowed him. "You're not pretty enough," she lied.

"How about… 'O Great and Powerful Bucky'?"

Maggie continued to consider the prospect, ignoring Bucky's very unhelpful suggestions, which were mostly based around his stunning good looks and prowess in the bedroom.

It was a warm day, and they'd decided to go out for a walk to escape their sweltering safehouse. Bucky was sweating through his layers, but Maggie was doing a little better in shorts and a loose shirt.

Of course, because they had apparently offended some God of Luck, they turned onto a side street just in time to see seven armed men in balaclavas storm into a bank.

Their joking abruptly died. Maggie met Bucky's eyes: they'd gone hard and grey, and she could feel his arm clicking and sliding into combat mode even as it rested over her shoulders. Maggie felt her own body tensing and readying itself, almost unconsciously.

"Cameras," Bucky said, his eyes locked on hers.

She nodded. "Civilians."

An instant later they separated, Maggie slipping into an alley beside the bank, and Bucky stalking straight for the front door.

Maggie dug her improvised digital jammer out of her backpack. Normally she didn't use it, as the act of a camera failing was suspicious in and of itself. But she didn't want video proof of what was about to happen reaching the intelligence community. She activated the jammer and swung her bag back over her shoulders, gritting her teeth at the sound of shouting and gunshots from inside the building.

_You better not get yourself shot, Bucky._

As Maggie shouldered open a fire escape and slipped into the air conditioned shadow of the building, she almost smiled at the thought. A year and a half ago she wouldn't have spared a thought for the possibility of the Winter Soldier being shot – she knew he was perfectly capable of handling any situation he was sent in to, and that he could survive multiple gun shots. Now, with her shirt sticking to her skin and her ears straining for movement in the dark corridors, she still didn't doubt Bucky's capability. But she  _worried_ , and she couldn't help it. She hoped it wouldn't be a detriment in a combat situation.

Maggie paced past unoccupied offices, honing in on the situation in the lobby. It sounded like the gunmen were merely intimidating their victims at the moment, shouting threats and firing pot-shots. She wondered if they'd had a plan for the cameras.

Oh well. Thanks to the blinking jammer in her pocket, they wouldn't have to worry about it. They'd have other things to worry about in a moment.

She finally reached the lobby, an open plan space with glass walls and white tile. She crouched behind a teller's desk and peered out. The floor was strewn with sobbing civilians; bank employees and customers, their hands on the backs of their heads as they lay on the tile floor. The gunmen – because they were all men, she noted – stood over their victims, shouting for silence.

Maggie ran an experienced eye over the situation. The men were in jeans and jackets, wielding semi-automatic weapons that they clearly knew how to use, if the shot-out cameras were any indication, though she didn't sense any elements of military precision. Gun enthusiasts, then.  _Greedy_ gun enthusiasts.

And, she noted with a smirk, there were only six of them now. They didn't seem to have realised they were short a man – perhaps they'd sent him ahead to the vault or to secure the building. Maggie didn't think that guy would have lasted long on his own.

As if she had summoned him with a thought, Maggie spotted Bucky on the other side of the lobby, looking out from behind a pillar. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes flickered to the gunmen, who were currently trying to figure out who the manager of the bank was. The screams and sobs in the lobby were dying down, but Maggie's skin twitched at each shuddering, terrified gasp, and the sounds of boots hitting flesh.

The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had not needed words.

It seemed Maggie and Bucky didn't either.

They shared a glance, deep brown eyes meeting steely grey-blue.

Simultaneously, they stepped out from their hiding places and descended on the remaining six gunmen.

Maggie didn't have time to think about what she was going to do. She just  _did_ , her feet slipping soundlessly across the tile floor toward the first gunman. She seized his arm and broke it across her knee, catching the gun he dropped and driving her elbow into his chin at the same time, knocking him out cold. She sidestepped his falling body and lobbed his gun at the second man, following it up with a driving kick into the centre of his chest, sending him flying into a teller's desk. She was light on her feet, almost dancing over the shaking bodies on the floor, unleashing her long-dormant skills on the gunmen before they'd even had a chance to notice they were under attack.

As she'd stepped out, Maggie had noticed one of the other gunmen kicking a cowering woman, his sneer obvious even through his ski mask. He had just started to turn, startled by the sound of his partners slamming into office furniture, when Maggie tore the gun from his hand and punched him in the side, snapping two ribs. He doubled over, gasping, and she stomped down on his foot. Her heel spur flickered out for less than a second as she did so, slicing through his boot and into the floor. The man toppled, and lost consciousness on the way down by way of Maggie's fist.

The three men were on the floor in seconds, and Maggie whirled to face the last standing gunman. She'd had her eyes on her opponents, but she'd been aware of Bucky the whole time – he'd taken down his first two gunmen with the same speed and efficiency as she had, and she'd just  _known_ where he was, regardless of whether she could see or hear him.

In a millisecond, Maggie processed the data: the last gunman lifted his weapon, aiming for the larger threat – Bucky. A security guard on the floor reached for his sidearm. Bucky saw both actions.

Maggie took two light steps across the floor and leaped just as the gunman fired. Her fist slammed into his shoulder, crushing the nerve and making his whole arm slacken and drop the gun. She followed it up with a kick to the back of his knee, and then a fist across the jaw when he turned to gape at his attacker.

Bucky had rolled under the gunfire, kicked the security guard's gun out of his hand, and risen gracefully to his feet just as the last gunman slammed face-first into the white tile.

As quickly as they had attacked, Maggie and Bucky vanished. Most of the civilians had barely had enough time to look up from the floor at the first signs of violence, and none had time to see their rescuers faces. It took a few seconds for the terrified employees and customers of the bank to realise that all the gunmen had been eliminated. In the silence following the fast, brutal attack, men and women climbed cautiously to their feet, trading bewildered glances.

Maggie and Bucky didn't look back. They sprinted up fire escapes to the roof of the bank and then leaped from roof to roof to get away, as the chorus of sirens filled the air.

 

They didn't speak until they were crouched on the back of a dusty cargo train, heading north out of the city.

Maggie let out a breath and turned to Bucky. His long hair was in disarray, and his brow was heavy over his grey-blue eyes. She reached up to place a palm on his cheek, but then thought better of it.

"Are you okay?" she asked, over the rattle of the train. The cool air brushed her hair off her flushed face.

Bucky met her eyes, and his lips lifted in a half-smile. "Alright, considering. Thanks for getting that last guy."

"Well you're the sniper, you're my backup. I'm the one who swoops in to do the hard work." She was only partially joking – that had been her instinct, back in that moment when the last man lifted his gun. And judging by their seamless, coordinated movements, it had been Bucky's instinct as well.

His tense face relaxed a little at her teasing. "Are you alright? That was…" He let out a breath.

She knew what he meant. Now that they were still, with the breeze cooling the sweat from their skin, the swift violence of the bank was settling in. They hadn't used their skills in over a year, but they'd slid right back into it as if they'd never left.

Maggie's eyes squeezed shut as she recalled the crunch of limbs, the whites of the gunmen's eyes, the way her heel spur slid through flesh like butter. Her knuckles ached from breaking men's bones.

She took a long breath, and opened her eyes. Bucky was still watching her, and she could sense that he was disturbed as well.

"It's not the same," she whispered, and though the air rushing over the back of the train snatched the words out of her mouth, she knew he heard her. "We didn't kill them," she said, a little louder.

Bucky nodded, long and slow, and his hand rested over hers on the tarnished metal roof of the train. "We did the right thing."

Maggie rested her forehead on his shoulder. "You got that seventh guy, right?"

He huffed a laugh, as if surprised she even had to ask. "Out cold in the break room. They'll find him."

"Those guys… were not very smart."

That made him laugh again. "In their defence, I don't think they counted on us walking by."

Maggie rolled her shoulders, trying to ease some of the nervous energy out of her muscles. She'd robbed banks before, terrorized civilians before. She'd never tried to stop something like it from happening. It felt… good. Rewarding, even, once she got over the unnerving feeling of bringing out her old skills. She wondered if this was how her brother felt when he put on his armor and saved people.

Maggie slid her free hand up Bucky's back, resting it over his shoulder blade. The steady beat of his heart echoed against her fingertips. "You did good."

Bucky's metal hand, still disguised in a glove, cradled the back of her head. "You were alright, too, I suppose."

She laughed into his shoulder, and felt more tension slip away. No one was dead, no one had even got a good look at them, and they were going to be miles away before anyone started asking questions. People were safe because of what she and Bucky had done.

Maggie had no problem marking that down as a good day.

 

* * *

* * *

 

The news ended up labeling the incident as a "Bizarre Robbery-Gone-Wrong". It seemed there were mixed witness reports – some reported two people attacking the thieves, probably a man and a woman, but others were sure it had been more than two. No one saw the rescuers' faces, but everyone agreed that they hadn't spoken to each other or anyone else. They'd appeared out of nowhere, dealt out terrifyingly efficient destruction, and then vanished.

The police questioned the would-be bank robbers, but they'd hardly seen anything and they weren't exactly keen on cooperating with the police. Hospital staff puzzled over the blade-shaped wound in one of the gunmen's feet, but couldn't work out what had caused it.

The news decided that the rescuers were vigilantes, maybe even super-powered.

Bucky had looked up from that particular article and asked: "How does it feel to be a vigilante, doll?"

"Oh, so different, handsome. It brings a whole new level of class to being a boring old 'fugitive'."

He laughed, and Maggie rolled her eyes.

"Handsome?" he asked, when he stopped laughing.

She shrugged. "It's better than Sergeant Good-Looking, or any of those other awful ones you suggested."

"… I'll take it."

 

* * *

 

They didn't encounter anything else quite like the New Delhi incident. They scared a pick-pocket or two, and Maggie discovered she had a talent for getting creepy guys at bars to back off from obviously uncomfortable women. Bucky re-discovered his talent for finishing fights that other people (Maggie) started.

For Maggie's twenty ninth birthday they went to an amusement park in Pakistan. They whooped and laughed on the rides, bought hot dogs and popcorn, and hustled the game vendors. Bucky reminisced about going to Coney Island with Steve back in the day, and they agreed that they would have to go there one day. They knew it wasn't possible, but for just one day it was easier to pretend.

They ducked into a photobooth together and came out with three photographs – the first photos of the two of them together. In the first photo Bucky was grinning broadly while Maggie frowned at him. Between the first and the second photo Bucky had explained what people usually did with their faces while their photo was being taken, so in the second they were smiling. In the third Bucky was pressing a kiss against Maggie's cheek and her eyes were closed, her smile wider and a little more real.

Maggie slipped the printed photos into a secret compartment of her wings, originally designed to house chemical and biological weapons for dispersion mid-flight. The compartment was vacuum-sealed and protected from the heat of her engines.

Bucky won Maggie a plush toy flower from the can shooting game, which only made Maggie determined to get him something. Choosing the strongman game was probably cheating, or taking advantage of her super soldier serum, but it sure felt good when she swung the hammer and made the bell at the top of the game chime. She chose the biggest prize they had for Bucky, an enormous orange teddy bear which obscured the top half of his body when he carried it around. They quickly realized they couldn't take the bear with them, so they fed a few more rupees to the photobooth and took another set of photos with the orange monstrosity. The bear was only visible in the first two photos, as Bucky had started kissing Maggie before the third photo and she'd dropped it.

She tucked away those photos as well, blushing at the sight of herself wrapped up in Bucky's touch, and they gifted the bear to a delighted seven-year-old.

Back at the safehouse that night, Maggie got the rest of her present: a couple of postcards from places they had been, including one with a print of the  _Carta de Amor_ painting in the Santiago National Museum of Fine Arts. He'd also gotten her a necklace: a beautiful pearl pendant on a sterling silver chain. It stilled her breath in her chest.

"I earned every dollar that went into that," Bucky said, his eyes soft. "I didn't want HYDRA to have any part of it."

Maggie kissed him with the taste of tequila in her mouth and the feel of the cool pearl in her palm, and she didn't say  _I love you_  but she meant it.

 

Of course, because she was terrible at holding words back when she couldn't get them out of her head, especially with Bucky, she said it a few days later anyway. They were visiting another university, with plans to sneak into a few engineering lectures, and Bucky's hand was in hers and the sun was on her face and even her genius brain couldn't think of a reason  _not_ to say the words, so she did.

He said them back, his blue-grey eyes bright and his fingers trembling on her cheeks, and Maggie realised that the words hadn't actually changed anything. They'd both meant it for a while, in their eyes and their touches and the way they knew each other, inside and out.

It later occurred to Maggie that she should have required more data on  _love_ , before professing it so confidently, but when she did her research it became clear that this, at least, wasn't something you  _could_ research. It couldn't even really be expressed, though that hadn't stopped humanity from trying for thousands of years.

Maggie, for once content with the lack of a concrete answer, was just glad that she was lucky enough to have stumbled into love, to be  _in_ it, to have Bucky and have him love her back. She didn't know if she deserved it, but it seemed that love wasn't something that one deserved. It was something one got, without rhyme or reason or empirical data.

 

* * *

 

They continued to sneak into lectures and seminars at every university they passed. Bucky was interested, but he didn't have the base knowledge to keep up with the advanced theory, so he usually ended up sleeping at his desk while Maggie listened to the professor with wide, unblinking eyes.

They took on odd jobs as they travelled. Bucky usually picked up labour jobs, where he could keep his head down and settle his mind with movement. Maggie usually swung for data entry or mechanic jobs, though she had to be careful that she wasn't getting too much attention for being a female mechanic, let alone a genius mechanic. She felt an unholy joy whenever she encountered an asshole who assumed she didn't know how to fix cars because she was a woman. They always left with their car in great condition, and with the vague sense that their life was in danger.

Bucky often stopped by Maggie's employer's car repair workshop after his shifts ended, to say hi, to flirt a little while they were both coated in grease and sweat, and to watch her verbally dismantle any customer or co-worker who said anything along the lines of  _what are you doing here, pretty lady?_ Or  _can you get someone else to take a look at it?_ Bucky liked the look she got in her eyes while she proved them wrong. He liked her nimble hands and her fast mouth, and he enjoyed it when the idiots would look to him for help, because he was a man, and when they shrank back from what Maggie called his  _murder eyes._

"I probably shouldn't enjoy that so much," she said, when one man left with his face as white as a ghost. He'd called her  _sweetheart_ and tried to explain what a torque wrench did.

Bucky tipped his head. "There are worse hobbies."

Maggie pulled him down for a hungry kiss, her oil-stained fingers twisting in his collar.

 

* * *

 

As a new year rolled around and they hopped from one European country to another, Maggie and Bucky fell into some kind of  _normal_ _._ They watched TV shows, went on dates to places like the zoo, or the planetarium, or the cinema. Maggie tried to get better at dancing ("Last time I was too quick to seduce you, we have to concentrate this time!"), and Bucky asked questions about her various projects and mechanical designs. He started watching baseball on TV, but Maggie couldn't stand it.

Some parts of Europe brought back new memories for Bucky, of fighting and dying in the war. They visited a few war museums and memorials, and Bucky spent his free time researching his past, trying to put together the pieces. He had a lot more pieces than Maggie had, and his were more jumbled.

Sometimes, in the few blissful days when they didn't have tortured nightmares, when they weren't drowning in their guilt, when they didn't have to flee a city for fear they'd been tracked, Maggie could almost pretend that they were normal.

 

* * *

 

January, 2016  
New Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"What are you working on?"

Sam jerked, accidentally knocking a pile of papers off his desk and smacking his knee on the table leg. He whirled around on his swivel chair, and his eyes widened at the sight of Wanda Maximoff in his office doorway.

"… Hey, Wanda."

He and the Sokovian had gotten friendly since they'd started training to be Avengers together last year – they worked well together, as well as a non-powered dude with a wingpack could work with a woman with straight-up magic powers, and he'd talked to her a little about her grief over her brother and her trouble adjusting to the new environment. Still, they hadn't hung out much outside of training. She spent most of her non-Avengers time with Vision, and Sam split his time between hanging out with Steve, visiting the VA in D.C., and… this.

Wanda stepped into his office and looked around, taking in the view of the facility from his seventh-story window, and the tasteful pot plants on his desk. "This is nice."

Sam leaned forward to pick up his strewn papers, keeping Wanda in the corner of his eye. She was wearing a dress and a hoodie, and she looked… bored.

"Vision not home?" he asked, and didn't miss the slight colour that brought to her cheeks.

"He went to the science conference with Tony," she said, her accented words careful, and turned her attention back to Sam's desk. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had projected a series of holograms over his workspace. "What are you working on?"

Sam stacked the papers back into place. "It's a… missing persons case."

He didn't know how much he ought to tell Wanda. Since the New Avengers had started, Sam had been working on finding Barnes and Margaret Stark on and off, with pretty much zero luck. As far as he knew, all the original Avengers were aware of the search, and most of the latest recruits knew too: he and Rhodey, obviously, and Vision had all of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s data. Wanda was the only one in the dark.

Today was the first time he and Steve had collaborated on the search in about a month, going over the very little progress made and brainstorming new leads. They usually had a meeting once a month with Tony about the search, but he was in Austria or somewhere this week, so they'd catch him up when he got back.

Today they'd been honing in on some shadow data about a potential abandoned HYDRA base, but Steve had stepped out for a meeting with Hill about an hour ago so he was back to reviewing their search materials.

Wanda ran her eyes over the papers and holograms, brow quirked. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had been working through CCTV footage from various suspected hideouts around the world, and as Wanda watched, the hologram shifted to a still of the Wyvern in flight at the Triskelion, red goggles glowing and black wings spread.

Wanda froze. "You are looking for her?"

Sam sat up at the cold shock on his fellow Avenger's face. "You know her?"

She shook her head, still staring at the hologram. Her young face was creased with shock and fear. "No, but… I saw her. She was at the HYDRA base in Sokovia, the day Pietro and I arrived from the riots. She was leaving when we were arriving, and I remember thinking…"

There was the minutest noise from the doorway, and Sam and Wanda turned to see Steve leaning against the doorframe. His face was closed off, serious.

As if realising the gravity of what she'd just walked into, Wanda's dark eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"

Steve shook his head. "It's alright. You were saying?"

Wanda cleared her throat and continued hesitantly. "I remember thinking… that HYDRA had told us that they would give us the power to stand up to our oppressors. I looked at  _her-_ " Wanda nodded at the image of the Wyvern "- and thought that was what they were going to do to us."

Sam rubbed his jaw. A sighting of the Wyvern from more than two years ago wasn't exactly a lead, but nowhere in the files had it said that the assassin had been to Sokovia.

Wanda was glancing from Steve to Sam, and then back at the files on the desk. "Who is she?"

Sam raised his eyebrows at Steve. "Wanda could help us, you know."

Steve glanced at his feet, arms crossed. Sam could practically see his mind working. Finally, he looked up. "Wanda, I… we're trying to keep this a private matter – if the Avengers get involved, then the world gets involved, and… we should ask Tony."

At that, Wanda's eyes flashed red and she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. She more or less had a handle on her powers, but she'd been having the most trouble with the telepathic side of things – she didn't go actively hunting for other peoples' thoughts, but she said that sometimes the minds and emotions of others overwhelmed her. And apparently whatever Steve was thinking was loud enough to be picked up.

Steve sighed. "I guess there's not much point in trying to keep secrets from you, huh."

Wanda glanced from Steve to the Winter Soldier file on Sam's desk, and then back to Steve. "I am sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"I know," he said, and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "What did you pick up?" His eyes were serious.

Wanda opened and closed her mouth, discomfort and uncertainty flickering across her face. Eventually, she spoke: "… pain. You… you were thinking about your friend, about his file." She nodded at the Kiev file. "It was only a glimpse, but… you thought he was dead, then he was alive, but not himself, and now he's… missing. I don't know what the connection to  _her_ , is, though."

Steve ran a hand through his hair. "That's about the gist of it. Sam, you want to fill her in on the basics?"

Sam cocked an eyebrow. "What about keeping this a private matter?"

"We shouldn't be keeping secrets within the team," Steve sighed, and leaned against the window. He looked tired, but he hid it well under the Captain America façade.

It only took them about fifteen minutes to bring Wanda up to speed on the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier. She took it all in her stride, though she seemed to be affected by the strong emotions Steve was putting out – when Sam mentioned the Winter Soldier's brainwashing, she winced and glanced at Steve out of the corner of her eye.

When Sam finished with a short recap of their fruitless search, Wanda looked back at the hologram of the Wyvern with a thoughtful glance. "I wish I had had my powers when I met her, so I could have looked into her mind and seen what she felt."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "You could do that?"

"Yes. I could tell you if her mind was her own. I could do the same for…" she looked over her shoulder at Steve, who had glanced up from where he'd been staring at his folded arms. "I could do it for him."

Steve had that earnest, hopeful look on his face again, and Sam repressed a sigh.

"I'll keep that in mind."

 

When Tony returned from his trip they told him about the new development, and he didn't seem that concerned about Wanda knowing about his sister. Things were still a little awkward between him and the young Sokovian, but he trusted her as a member of the team, and she no longer sought revenge against him. It made things easier that he lived in Manhattan most of the time, only ducking in to the New Avengers Facility every now and then to make sure everything was running smoothly or to join Dr Selvig or Dr Cho in the labs.

"So, Wanda, welcome to the season of  _The Bold and the Beautiful_ that is my life," he quipped, flipping an arc reactor component in his hand.

Wanda just looked confused.

Tony sighed. "Amnesiac not-really-dead brainwashed sister? No? You haven't seen that show?"

"Vision told me it was not worth watching," she hedged, toying with her sleeve.

Tony shrugged. "He's probably right. So, you mentioned you recognised the photo of the Wyvern?"

Wanda repeated her single encounter with the Wyvern for Tony's benefit.

"So she was the one who got the sceptre to HYDRA," he said, and leaned back in his lab chair. He looked exhausted.

Steve piped up: "They would have gotten it anyway, Tony-"

"Yeah, but she was  _there_ so they decided to use their ' _ultimate weapon'_." He leaned forward and pinched his nose. Wanda was shifting uncomfortably, the room packed tight with emotion. Tony sighed. "The more I look, the more I find out about all the shit they made her do for the last twenty years, and it's… well, it ain't good."

Wanda was wincing now. Sam glanced from Tony to Steve, watching the mirrored pain in their faces. He didn't need to be a telepath to see that both of them were still pretty messed up over this.

Tony wasn't done. "You know sometimes she was within a hundred miles of me? Sometimes a hell of a lot closer. She was at a new year's party I was at, doing some horrible shit. She was at the Stark Expo, did some horrible shit there. And I was just… oblivious. At least you had the excuse of being on ice, Cap. Only took you three years before you cracked the case."

Steve shifted his weight. "You know it's not your fault, Tony. It's HYDRA's."

"Yeah, and we went and blew them all the hell up, so now I don't have anyone to aim my repulsors at, except…" he gestured to a pile of shattered glass in the corner of his lab, which looked as if someone had hastily swept it out of the way and then left it.

Sam's eyes widened and he glanced around, finally spotting the section of wall where a glass partition should have stood. Sam frowned. Stark had been doing okay since Ultron, shacking up with Ms Potts and retiring from the Avenger side of things. Clearly things weren't all on the up and up.

Wanda and Steve didn't seem to know what to say, so Sam piped up: "Well, this might not be quite the right time, but, uh, I might've found an abandoned HYDRA base?"

Tony jumped up from his chair. "It's  _exactly_ the right time, Captain Sidekick. Come on, let's go."

"Hey now," Sam said, but then didn't finish that sentence, because… okay, yeah. Fair enough.

He, Steve and Wanda filed out of the lab after Tony, and none of them questioned the fact that Tony seemed fine with putting on the Iron Man suit again after seemingly retiring. If the man needed to blow shit up, then they'd help him do it.

Wanda, for her part, finally had an answer to the strange sensations of pain and grief she'd been picking up at the Facility over the past few months, and a name to match the monstrous face she'd met at the HYDRA Research Base in Sokovia all those years ago. She knew the pain of losing a sibling, and she'd do what she could to help her teammates get theirs back.

 

* * *

 

June 4th, 2016  
Bucharest, Romania

"Sometimes I think you like the arm better than me," Bucky murmured, as they sat on the kitchen countertop in their latest safehouse.

Maggie was playing with his metal fingers, running her fingernails along the grooves and divots of the joints. The metal gleamed in the light filtered through the papered-over safehouse windows. "Mm," she mumbled. "Do you think you could convince the arm to run away with me? It'd be so much easier, it's a lot more portable than you."

Bucky dropped his head onto her shoulder. "I'm going to miss you."

They both looked at her packed backpack by the front door, and then Bucky's belongings around the apartment. It was sparse, but they'd bought things like utensils and pots from the thrift store, and Bucky's old notebooks were stacked on a shipping pallet that served as a shelf.

"I'll miss you too," Maggie murmured. "But I'll miss your arm more."

He laughed into her shoulder, and the arm whirred on cue.

A week ago Maggie recalled another mission in a nightmare, and the details had slowly filtered back – she'd assassinated a Ukrainian man maybe ten years ago: landed behind him while he hiked in the mountains and kicked him off a cliff. Now that she had the details, she couldn't get them out of her head, and she'd decided to travel to the Ukraine for a week or two to check on his family, maybe work out why she'd been sent to kill him in the first place. She wasn't really sure what she wanted to do, but the pull toward the man's grave and his living family was undeniable.

Bucky had offered to come, but she wanted to see the impact of her crimes alone this time. Besides, it was nice in Bucharest – Bucky spoke the language, he had a good job in a nearby factory, and he liked the markets. It seemed cruel to uproot him just to spy on people whose lives Maggie had ruined. They'd split up before, and it wouldn't be for too long.

They'd just celebrated Maggie's thirtieth birthday two days ago, sightseeing local castles and indulging in Romanian  _Țuică_. Bucky had recalled some of his art classes from the forties and gifted her a hand-drawn pencil portrait, of Maggie with her safety goggles on and an expression of deep concentration on her face. The drawing was a little rough, but Maggie easily recognized her own face and was startled by Bucky's perspective of her: in the drawing she looked focused, wise, and more than a little beautiful. Her hair and eyes were dark, and he'd clearly studied her face in detail. Maggie had tucked the drawing into the hidden compartment of her wings, along with their photobooth photos, for safekeeping.

The day had been wonderful, but now it was time for her to go.

Maggie kissed the top of Bucky's head. "You're going to be okay?"

Steve had been in the news pretty regularly lately, since the incident in Lagos a month ago and the rising political and public pressure for oversight of the Avengers. Tony and a couple of others had already signed the Sokovia Accords, but public debate was getting more heated and widespread as the weeks rolled on with no response from the rest of the Avengers.

Bucky and Maggie were naturally suspicious of any kind of authoritarian control, though they could understand why the world feared the Avengers. Either way, the Accords were unlikely to affect Maggie and Bucky, and all they could do was watch from afar and hope that Steve and Tony came out unscathed. Bucky was convinced that no amount of public pressure would get Steve to do something he didn't want to do, and Maggie wondered how her brother would feel about that.

Bucky lifted his head from her shoulder and hopped off the counter. "I'll be fine. I'm going to work on my notebook some more, try to get my head right. I'll worry about you, though."

Maggie hopped off the counter as well. "I'll be okay. It's just information gathering, and I know what to do if I have a panic attack or a traumatic memory. We've done this before."

They continued exchanging concerns about the other's wellbeing until they both laughed at each other, and Bucky walked her to the door. She was taking the laptop, leaving him with only his burner phone in the way of tech. The safehouse didn't even have a TV. But he kept reassuring her he'd be fine, and before she knew it her bag was on her back and the door was open.

Maggie wrapped her arms around Bucky and pressed her face into his neck. "I won't be long. Two weeks." The words were muffled, but he heard them. He wrapped his metal arm around her waist and ran his flesh hand through her hair, fingers gentle.

"Be safe."

"I will." She lifted her head and pressed her lips against his, trying to memorise every second. His fingers combed through her hair.

After a long moment Maggie disentangled herself from Bucky, already missing his warmth and his smell and his grey-blue eyes, and took a deep breath. "I'll be back soon. You're my mission, after all."

He smiled, and his eyes glinted. "You're my mission, too. I love you."

"I love you, too."

Before she could start checking that he'd be alright again, or go back in for another kiss, Maggie clenched her jaw and turned on her heel, climbing down the flights of stairs away from the apartment. She felt Bucky's eyes on her back until she was out of sight, and mentally scolded herself for feeling so morose. She pressed her fingers to her chest, where the pearl necklace he'd given her last year was tucked under her clothes. She'd see him soon.

For now, she had fragments of her bloody past to piece together.


	34. Chapter 34

 

June 23rd, 2016  
Commercial Bus, Outskirts of Bucharest

Maggie leaned her forehead against the glass window, watching streets and buildings roll past as the bus made the last leg of its fourteen-hour journey from the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr.

She was bone-tired, since she wasn't stupid enough to let herself sleep on public transport, and she missed Bucky. She'd been away longer than expected, almost three weeks, because once she'd started looking into the remnants of her victim's life she couldn't pull herself away. She'd texted a coded message to Bucky's burner phone to let him know she was staying longer, but other than that they'd had no contact.

The man she'd killed was named Maksym Chumak, and it hadn't taken her long to figure out why HYDRA had wanted him dead. Six years ago he'd been a highly successful businessman, when he'd wandered into the wrong room at the wrong time. He'd overheard a conversation between two other business men who happened to be HYDRA, and then started asking questions. When the Wyvern made his death appear to be an unfortunate hiking accident, Chumak's business failed and his wife and two daughters were left with no income and no father or husband.

Maggie had watched their lives from afar for over two weeks now. At first the sight of their faces had made her sick with guilt, but then she'd developed a sort of fascination. They'd rebuilt their lives – the daughters were co-CEOs of the business they'd built from the ground up, and the widow had remarried – seemingly happily – to a public servant. Still, Maggie had seen that there was a hole in their lives that they'd learned to live with – Maksym's photo on the fireplace mantle, a wedding ring on a chain around a neck. They didn't know it, but the Wyvern had ruined their lives six years ago. Their grief and love remained.

Maggie found herself wondering if she'd left a similar hole in Tony's life, and wondered what it looked like now.

Maggie had meddled a little. Maksym's widow had some parking fines, which she managed to make go away, and she promoted the girls' business by posing as a wealthy socialite and loudly praising the girls' work at a party packed with aristocrats and business people. It didn't make her feel much better. She'd considered approaching the family and telling them the truth, but she didn't know if they'd want that. Would it make things worse, if they knew their father and husband had been killed on purpose?

Nineteen days had been enough for her to work out that watching their lives, a macabre ghost of their father's death, was not doing anyone any good. So she'd left a bouquet of flowers on the widow's doorstep (periwinkles, her favorite), and got on a bus back to Bucharest, taking her memories of Maksym's terrified scream with her.

While she'd been away, she'd also heard the news that Peggy Carter had died. Maggie grieved distantly for her namesake, the woman she barely remembered. She knew that Aunt Peggy had been incredible; intelligent and brave, an inspiration for Maggie to look up to. She wished she could have met the woman again before she died, instead of remembering the legend.

As she pressed her forehead into the glass, Maggie was surprised to realize that as she grieved for Peggy she was thinking of Steve, hoping he was okay. She thought it was probably strange that she felt that way for a man who she'd only met once while she was trying to kill him, but she couldn't help feeling like she knew him, since Bucky talked about him all the time.

As the buildings grew taller and closer together, and the signs started to show places that she recognised, Maggie felt a thrill go through her at the prospect of seeing Bucky again, despite her fatigue and grief. She'd missed him in the cold, lonely Ukraine nights, as she wrestled with the remainders of her past crimes. She'd missed the way he could make her smile so easily, the way he was always there, warm and solid by her side. She couldn't wait to see him again.

As soon as she had the thought, Maggie mentally scolded herself and leaned back in her seat. She couldn't allow her emotion to make her reckless – she'd turned off her laptop and burner phone to avoid any possibility of electronic tracking from Ukraine to Romania, and she ought to take caution instead of marching straight back up to the safehouse and throwing herself into Bucky's arms, like she wanted to. She should hang around in the city a few hours, doubling back on herself and making sure she wasn't followed.

Maggie was still turning over logistics, watching the scenery as the bus drove further into Bucharest, when her enhanced hearing caught on a hushed voice three rows in front: " _Soldat de Iarna-_ " [" _The Winter Soldier-_ "]

Maggie didn't outwardly react, but it was a near thing. At the three murmured Romanian words, her whole body went cold. Maggie's guts twisted and seemed to sink through her body, and her face tightened – it felt like she was about to have a panic attack.

Taking a long breath through her nose, Maggie leaned forward slightly, peering through the gap in the seats so she could spot the source of the voice.

Three rows ahead and to the right: it was a woman in a pale shawl, reading something off her phone to her friend in the seat next to her. Maggie closed her eyes and strained her ears, ignoring her pounding heart and the cold sweat on her palms.

She didn't catch all of it, but she heard enough to make bile rise in her throat. Fingers trembling, Maggie fumbled for her burner phone and turned it on, operational security be damned. Immediately the screen burst to life with information, too much. It took her a few moments to focus enough on what her program – set up to inform her of any mention of the Wyvern or the Winter Soldier – was telling her.

Regulating her breathing and trying to slow her heartrate, Maggie scanned the information. UN Bombing in Vienna. Twelve fatalities. Winter Soldier. James Buchanan Barnes. The entire goddamn world looking for him.

Maggie stared at the CCTV still of the bomber for ten seconds.  _It looked like him._ As soon as she had the thought, she angrily pushed it away. He wouldn't – she knew he wouldn't, no more than she would.

But then she recalled those Russian words, shouted through frozen air, and she had to double over in her seat to stop herself from being sick. Had someone found Bucky and turned him back into everything he feared? Maggie clapped her hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, almost crushing her burner phone in her other hand.

A cold voice in the back of her mind spoke:  _Focus. Mission Objective._

With a shuddering breath, Maggie sat up. Mission. The mission was Bucky. There wasn't any time for fear, or tears.

Clenching her jaw, Maggie wiped the information and the program from her burner phone, and composed a single text message:  _Dragonfire._  Their ultimate code word, the doomsday word, that meant  _they've found us, go dark._

Maggie didn't care if Bucky was triggered, or on the run already, this was all she could do to protect him from here and she was damn well going to do it.

That done, she slid out of her seat into the aisle of the moving bus and pulled her backpack, heavy with the weight of her wings, onto her shoulders. She strode down the aisle, ignoring the curious glances of her fellow passengers, and put her hand on the driver's shoulder. He glanced up at her, startled, and she didn't know what he saw in her face but it seemed to make him scared.

" _Parcați imediat,_ " [" _Park immediately,_ "] she said, injecting some of her fear and nerves into her voice. She didn't speak Romanian fluently, but she knew enough to get him to do what she wanted.  _"Este o urgență_." [" _It's an emergency._ "]

He immediately began questioning her, but he turned the wheel and stepped on the brake, pulling onto the shoulder of the freeway. Passengers on the bus were murmuring to each other, looking around for the emergency.

Maggie ignored the driver's questions, and didn't wait for him to stop. As soon as he was near the edge of the road she yanked the door open and hopped onto the tarmac, taking a second to balance herself before she ran for the edge of the freeway and jumped off, legs windmilling until she hit the residential street below.

She hit the ground running. Like a shot she was off, tearing through streets towards the location of the safehouse, her boots slapping against the pavement and her hair flying.

Maggie was terrified. She hadn't been so confused and afraid in a long time, but she had her focus:  _Get to Bucky. Protect Bucky._ The news articles hadn't mentioned the Wyvern, so whoever came after Bucky might not be expecting her. They were supposed to  _protect_ each other, how could she have let this happen-

Her thoughts were cut off by the distant rumble of helicopters, and Maggie cursed. She'd been trained to identify helicopter models by sound when she was ten, and she knew that heavy thundering didn't belong to any news or recreational helicopter.

Jaw clenched, Maggie skidded to a halt and ducked into a dark alley. She allotted herself two minutes, and she used them well. First she pulled her wings out of her bag and hastily slotted them into her back, tearing holes in her shirt as she did so. That done, she folded the wings close to her body and disguised them with a secondary backpack, with the back cut away so it fit over her wings like a cover. It hid her wings, but she could leap into flight at a moment's notice.

Next, heart still pounding, she pulled out her burner phone and hacked into the local law enforcement agencies.

What she saw was enough to make her skin crawl with panic. They had the location of the safehouse, and what seemed like every goddamn agency was on their way to apprehend the Winter Soldier.  _Shoot on sight_ , read the orders.

Abruptly, Maggie's debilitating panic was numbed by a sense of cold focus that washed over her, emanating from where her wings slotted into her spine and flooding into the churning chasm of her chest.

Maggie crushed the burner phone in her hand and tossed it aside. Her face was blank, and her body was ready. She stepped back out onto the street and started running again, heading for the distant sound of helicopters and sirens. She blew past pedestrians to startled shouts, her body settling into the enhanced pace that she hadn't allowed herself to reach in over two years.

She had one mission. The Wyvern had always accomplished her missions.

 

* * *

 

Safehouse, Bucharest

Bucky was stealthing his way through the apartment building back to the safehouse, mind reeling from the headline about him in the newspaper, when his burner phone vibrated in his pocket.

Keeping a wary eye on his surroundings, he brought the phone out and looked at the screen.

A single text, from an unknown number:  _Dragonfire._

Bucky swallowed. Either someone had recognized Meg, or she'd found out about the worldwide manhunt for him. The article hadn't mentioned her, so he hoped she'd be safe, wherever she was.

Alert and on edge, Bucky crushed his burner phone in his metal hand and reached his floor. His footsteps were silent on the concrete stairs, and his eyes darted around the space, ready for any sign of surveillance or contact. The part of him that had planned a day of eating fruit, writing, and missing Meg was gone. He was relying on his Winter Soldier instincts now.

He reached his door, and froze.  _Someone was in the apartment._

For a moment he considered running. But he needed his backpack, and if he strained he could only hear one set of foot treads on the creaky floorboards. Steeling himself, Bucky crept into the safehouse.

_Steve._

That was his first thought on seeing the blue-uniformed silhouette standing in front of his fridge, and for a second he thought he'd gone crazy. Wishful thinking.

But the silhouette moved, reaching up for the notebook on top of the fridge, and Bucky's eyes tracked over the unmistakable frame, down to the gleaming metal shield.

Bucky's shoulders slumped out of his combat-ready stance, and he stared dumbly at his friend's back. It had been two and a half years since he'd left Steve bleeding and half-drowned on a riverbank, and it was almost seventy years since they'd last  _really_ been together; Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers.

It felt impossible, seeing his friend in the tiny, ramshackle safehouse he'd called home for almost a month and a half now. That was Steve, standing in his kitchen, behind the counter that he and Meg had sat on the day she left,  _reading his notebook._

All of this went through Bucky's mind in an instant, but he didn't make a sound.

"Understood," said  _Steve_ , and Bucky's brain clicked back into gear.

Comms. A mission. Of course, Steve was here to take him in.

Because Bucky had killed people.

He must have made some kind of noise, or moved, or something, because Steve whipped around and saw him.

Bucky tried to keep his face carefully blank, he really did, but he couldn't disguise the fact that he was staring at his friend's face, drinking him in. He didn't move. Couldn't move.

Steve looked him up and down, face serious, and asked: "Do you know me?"

Bucky took two breaths. If Steve was here it meant they'd found him, he was done. Bucky had spent two years on the run to protect Steve and he couldn't stop now. He was dangerous, now more than ever, and Steve would stop at nothing to protect the Bucky Barnes he knew. So now, Bucky needed to be the Winter Soldier.

"You're Steve," he said, and cursed the croakiness to his voice. "I read about you in a museum." He braced himself.

Steve shifted his weight, placed the notebook on the kitchen counter, and then  _started walking towards him._ "I know you're nervous. And you have plenty of reason to be." Steve stilled, and his eyes were serious under his cowl. "But you're lying."

Bucky was surprised, but didn't let it show. Could Steve read him so easily, even after all these years? Or had he picked up a few tricks in the future?

Steve straightened, and when he next spoke his voice was softer. "Do you know where the Wyvern is?"

Bucky almost blinked in surprise at the question, but he kept his face blank. "No." That wasn't a lie – Meg could be anywhere by now. He allowed himself to feel a second of relief that Steve – and whoever he was working with – didn't know where she was, and that there weren't any indicators in the apartment that she'd been there.

Steve stepped closer, and Bucky's instincts were screaming  _danger_ , but not because of Steve. Bucky clenched his jaw.

"I wasn't in Vienna, I don't do that anymore." He wanted to beat his hands against his face. Why should anyone trust him, let alone Steve? The UN bombing was nothing compared to what he'd done over the last seventy years. But he wanted to convince whoever was listening that he hadn't been that way in over two years. He'd been working on being a person, a partner. He had a soup ladle, for crying out loud. He'd been living.

Steve glanced out the window, and Bucky stiffened.

"Well the people who think you did are coming here now," Steve said, still moving closer. "And they're not planning on taking you alive."

Bucky felt the Soldier straightening inside him, ready to fight. He only took a second to consider the implications of Steve being here  _against orders_  before he said: "That's smart. Good strategy."

Footsteps on the ceiling, in the stairwell. Bucky's mind flooded with entrances and exits, fight strategies, likely strength of opponents. And the niggling thought:  _Keep Steve safe._

Steve looked scared now, his eyes fixed on Bucky from across the room. "This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck."

Bucky sighed, and loosened his limbs in preparation for combat. He almost wanted to make a joke –  _if only the little Steve Rogers from Brooklyn could hear you now_  – but no, he wasn't Bucky right now. He took a moment to think of Meg, hopefully far away and safe, and knew he was probably never going to see her again. He couldn't think about that – if he did, his mind would dissolve into a mess, and right now he needed to be the Soldier.

Footsteps at the door, heavy, probably holding a battering ram or a weapon.

"It always ends in a fight," he muttered, pulling off his glove.

"You pulled me from the river," Steve urged, his voice heavy with adrenaline and fear. " _Why_?"

 _Goddammit, Steve, leave it alone._  "I don't know," Bucky lied, meeting Steve's eyes.

"Yes you do."

The window shattered, and the safehouse turned into a warzone.

Bucky followed the contingency plan he'd set out for this location: beat back attackers, use the furniture to block entrances. Of course, he had to try to keep Steve out of the way as well, because the idiot was trying to protect him.

"Buck, stop! You're going to kill someone!"

As he slammed Steve to the ground and retrieved his backpack, Bucky couldn't help it: "I'm not going to kill anyone," he murmured, and the part of him that wasn't certain that Bucky Barnes would be the death of Steve Rogers hoped that Steve understood: he didn't  _want_  to kill anyone any more.

Bucky fought his way out of the safehouse and down the stairwell, using his HYDRA-learned skills in a way he'd hoped to never use them again. Steve was  _still_  there, the persistent moron, so Bucky leaped out the window, away from Steve and the special forces.

Then there was a guy in a black cat suit, and a helicopter, and the flying guy from the Triskelion, so Bucky retreated to the underpass, running past cars as the number of people chasing him seemed to multiply.

Despite the apparent organisation and skill of his pursuers, Bucky still had a fleeting hope of vanishing into the city, as he'd done so many times in the past, and making his way back to Meg and anonymity. But then that asshole in the cat suit snagged the rear wheel of his stolen motorbike and it was all over, him and the asshole and  _Steve, goddammit_ , surrounded by cars and helicopters and guns.

Steve reached out unconsciously toward Bucky, as if to say  _stand down_ , or  _I'll protect you_ , and despite his desperation and fear Bucky wanted to smile and roll his eyes simultaneously. His heart was pounding against his rib cage, and every instinct in him was on edge, aware of every gun muzzle pointed in his direction. He hadn't felt so exposed, so  _trapped_ , since HYDRA.

He couldn't fight any more. Couldn't do anything.

War Machine arrived – Meg knew that guy, Bucky thought – and then Bucky was being forced to his knees, the world around him all thundering helicopter blades and shouting soldiers, and then the bite of tarmac on his face.

He looked up when War Machine said  _your highness,_ but he only looked at Prince –  _King, now_ – T'Challa for an instant. Because just in his eyeline he caught sight of a familiar form on the stairs leading down to the underpass.

Bucky's heart skipped a beat, and his eyes widened. It was  _Meg._ She was in civilian clothes; jeans and a jacket, but she was wearing the backpack she'd designed to conceal her wings while she wore them. She was halfway down the stairs, unseen by the dozens of soldiers in the underpass who had their sights set on Bucky, Steve, and King T'Challa.

_What the hell is she doing here?_

Meg met his gaze, and her dark eyes flooded with pain at the sight of him being held down and restrained. Her face flickered with emotion – panic, anger, determination – and Bucky suddenly knew that she was planning to leap into the situation, heedless of the consequences, to rescue him.

Bucky wanted her miles away from here, from these men with guns and agendas.

As metal was clamped around his limbs, Bucky held her gaze and shook his head, just once.

 

* * *

 

Steve was being handcuffed, but Bucky was alive. All of it – Rhodey's disappointment, T'Challa's appearance, whatever consequences he was about to face – none of it mattered, because Bucky was alive.

Steve took a deep breath and glanced at his friend. He couldn't see his face, but something about the way Bucky was craning his neck made Steve look up.

There was a woman on the stairs. A civilian, by the look of her, tall, with dark hair and eyes, but something about her made Steve's brow furrow. Maybe it was the way she was looking at Bucky: making direct eye contact, with blatant emotion on her face – this was not how he'd expect a random civilian to look at the man being arrested on the tarmac right now. And now that he was looking, Steve thought he recognized the woman from the CCTV still from Los Andes, over a year ago.

Out of the corner of his eye, as he was handcuffed, Steve saw Bucky shake his head. Anyone else might have written it off as an act of futile resistance, or the result of the soldiers jostling him, but Steve  _knew_ his friend even after all these years. The woman's eyes brightened with tears, but then Bucky's face was shoved into the road and, as if she had never been there, the woman vanished.

As Steve was arrested and shoved into a black car beside Sam, his mind reeled: from the chase, seeing Bucky again, T'Challa's appearance, and the woman on the stairs.

He almost didn't credit his own eyes, it seemed so impossible.

_Has she been with Bucky this whole time?_


	35. Chapter 35

 

She'd  _failed._

As Maggie ran from the underpass, tears blurred her vision and she had to duck into the nearest abandoned building she could find, because all of her steely focus was melting away.

She sank to the ground against a cold cement wall, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

She'd failed.

She couldn't get the image out of her head: Bucky, his hair in his eyes as four men in black tac suits knelt on his back, restraining him. It had been  _him,_ though – Bucky, not the Soldier, in those blue-grey eyes. And he'd been surrounded by all those people, milliseconds away from pulling their triggers. Captain America had been there, stoic and firm in his uniform. So had the Falcon and War Machine, and some guy in a black cat suit, but she'd had eyes only for Bucky.

Two and a half years on the run, and this was how it ended – Bucky handcuffed and taken away by dozens of armed men, while Maggie let them do it.

She'd been ready to do what she had to, because Bucky had needed her help and she wouldn't stand by. But then he'd met her eyes, so broken and defeated, and shook his head  _no_.

Tears welled in Maggie's eyes, squeezing past the pressure of her hands and running down her cheeks. She knew why he'd said no – it wouldn't have been logical to throw herself into the middle of that choke point. Still, she'd  _left him._

At that, Maggie pulled her hands away from her eyes and glared at the opposite wall.

"No," she said, and the word echoed in the dusty space.

Maggie was out, and free, with her wings on her back and a laptop in her bag. And she had a mission.

Angrily wiping her tears away, Maggie pulled the computer out of her backpack and got to work.

 

* * *

 

Joint Counter Terrorist Center, Berlin

After the hustle of transporting them to the JCTC, Natasha cornered Steve and Sam in the office space they'd been designated.

Steve had kept his mouth shut, for the most part, knowing that nothing he said was going to make this better. At least he could see the CCTV footage of Bucky in his glass containment unit. Steve didn't like the situation, but this unfortunately seemed like one that he would have to wait out. He was terrible at waiting.

Natasha appeared as she always did: silently. Sam flinched when he spotted her standing at the end of the desk.

"This is a  _glass room_ ," he said, once he'd gotten over his shock. "How did you-"

"Unimportant," she said, voice clipped, and rested her hands on the back of the nearest chair. Her green eyes flicked over them, unreadable. "The clean-up crew haven't found any signs of anyone else living in that safehouse with Barnes," she said in a lower tone. "Rhodey's heading up the crew, and he said he hadn't noticed anything either. Tony's too busy and too anxious to ask, so I'll ask for him – did Barnes say anything about the Wyvern?"

Sam looked at Steve. Steve said: "I asked if he knew where she was. He said no."

Natasha rolled her eyes and turned to leave, but Steve wasn't done. "I thought I saw-" she turned back, and he grimaced. "I don't know."

He'd been turning it over in his mind since they'd been arrested.  _If_ that had been the Wyvern, then she was in the wind now. But he wondered if she could be Bucky's alibi for the bombing.

After the battle at the Triskelion, information had trickled into the public about the Winter Soldier and the Wyvern, mostly connected to their role in HYDRA and their histories of political assassinations. Still, no one in the public had known their true identities. But after the UN disaster, intelligence agencies released everything they knew about the Winter Soldier, including the name James Buchanan Barnes. Some newspapers had questioned whether the winged assailant from the Triskelion could have been involved as well, given her bloody history with the Winter Soldier, and intelligence agencies did have renewed questions about the Wyvern, but still only a select few people knew the Wyvern's real name.

Natasha frowned at his hesitation. "What, Steve."

He sighed. "There was a woman in the underpass. She was only there for a second, but she was looking at Bucky and she looked similar to that surveillance still from Los Andes."

Natasha cocked her head, and Sam sat up straighter in his seat. There was a moment of silence.

Natasha broke it. "I'll tell Tony. But right now, Steve, this isn't about her, and Tony knows that. It isn't even about Barnes." She levelled her gaze on him. "It's about the Avengers, and whether or not we get to stay together. Think about it."

Steve nodded even though he  _had_ thought about it, had been thinking about it ever since Lagos, and he knew what his decision was.

Natasha saw right through him, as always, and she sighed. "Wilson, come with me, they want to debrief you."

They left him alone in the room, and he went back to watching the CCTV of Bucky. Even though he was locked up in a glass prison, Steve couldn't help the relief of seeing his friend again.

Twenty minutes later the glass door slid open once more to reveal Tony, looking harried and hopeful. "Hey, you want to see something cool?"

It was a set of pens.

 

* * *

 

Office Building, Berlin

It was a nice day in Berlin, if one cared to notice, with a balmy blue sky and warm weather. The window of the room Maggie was working in had a wonderful view of the city, and the glittering river winding between statuesque ancient buildings.

It also happened to have a very good view of the Joint Counter Terrorist Center.

But she wasn't looking out the window right now. She was intently focused on her laptop screen, drafting plans to rescue Bucky from the clutches of the Avengers, the Joint Terrorist Task Force, Wakanda, and whoever else wanted him.

Within minutes of leaving Bucky in the Bucharest underpass, Maggie had opened her laptop and worked out the JTTF's plan for him: a flight to Berlin, followed by psychological evaluation and extradition. Her face had twisted at the diagrams for Bucky's containment unit: a glass box with heavy metal restraints, in the back of a truck. He'd spent a lifetime in a glass box, and the thought of him confined to another one made her hands clench into fists.

It had only taken her a few seconds to work out that she didn't have the resources to intercept Bucky on the way to Berlin, at least not without being taken herself.

So she'd found a postal flight she could sneak onto that would arrive in Berlin not long after the JTTF one did, and made a false employee account in a German van company's database, so she'd have a disguise and a vehicle as soon as she arrived.

Her van was currently parked outside the office building, and her starched uniform pressed against her skin as she worked at her laptop. She wore black trousers, a pale blue collared shirt, a thick navy jacket with the company logo emblazoned on the breast pocket and a cap that she could pull low over her face. The office workers hadn't looked twice at her when she strode into the building and found an empty room.

Her wings were a reassuring weight on her back, moored to her spine through holes she'd cut in the uniform jacket, and concealed by the backpack cover.

Now, she was looking through the digital notes of the clean-up crew sent to Bucharest. She was taken aback at the name  _Colonel James Rhodes,_ immediately picturing the neatly-dressed young man she'd teased mercilessly at a kitchen table so many years ago. Then she remembered that he was the War Machine now, an Avenger, and he'd signed the Accords. Not only that, but he was in charge of the crew sent to clean up the damage Bucky and the others had made in Bucharest, and investigate the safehouse.

The team had inventoried his things: his old notebooks, his mattress, the kitchen utensils they'd bought together. One part of the inventory read 'assorted food items', and Maggie remembered wondering on the bus back if Bucky had bought more of those Romanian cookies that they both liked, or if he might have visited another fruit market.

They'd also seized his backpack and inventoried it: his current notebook, his virtual planetarium,  _El Hobbit,_ and his Swiss Army Knife (they'd labelled it a 'multipurpose tool'). Seeing Bucky's belongings, his presents and the things he'd treasured, on a document labelled "Seizure List" made Maggie's eyes well with tears again. But she couldn't afford to cry any more, so she wiped her eyes, touched the shape of her pearl necklace hidden under her clothes, and focused on getting Bucky out.

She'd come up with almost a dozen rescue plans in her head, involving infiltration, EMPs, staging a non-lethal terrorist attack elsewhere, turning herself in with hidden weapons, and multiple other drastic and unlikely-to-work ideas. Infiltration was definitely a no-go, as the building was packed with Avengers who might work out who she was, including her brother.

She tried not to think too hard about the fact that her brother was almost definitely in the building, closer to her than he'd been in… many years.

Her best bet was intercepting Bucky in transit, once she worked out how to crack that containment unit and get around the likely dozens of troops that would be guarding him. She briefly questioned if he'd even want to vanish again, after seeing Steve, but that was a conversation to be had once he wasn't at the mercy of dozens of different intelligence agencies and governments.

 

* * *

 

In the next building, Steve and Tony exchanged shouts and heated barbs.

"I'm doing what has to be done," Tony eventually sighed, looking every bit of his forty six years, "to stave off something worse."

The air between them was silent and charged.

"You keep telling yourself that," Steve said, and returned the pen. "Hate to break up the set."

Steve stormed out, and Tony pushed his sunglasses onto his face to hide the desperate, damaged expression in his eyes.

 

* * *

 

As Maggie's fingers flew over her keyboard, tracking down weapons caches, transport hubs, mercenaries for hire and potential safehouses in Berlin, her mind raced a mile-a-minute.

She'd been working pretty much non-stop since she'd jumped off the bus in Bucharest, but something was nagging at the back of her mind. So far she'd just been reacting to the situation, instead of understanding it. She  _knew_ Bucky hadn't blown up that building in Vienna. He just hadn't. So why would someone use his trigger words to make him do it, or frame him?

Maggie sighed and tucked her hair back into her cap. She'd always expected she and Bucky would be arrested for the things they'd already done, not something they hadn't.

She turned the problem over in the back of her mind as she turned her attention toward the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre itself. She tried to slip into the intranet quietly, but was surprised to find herself blocked by some kind of… intelligence. A thrill of fear went through her at the memory of Ultron's malicious work last year, but this wasn't quite like that. Not as alien, more… artificial.

Maggie grit her teeth. She'd done research on her brother's A.I., and this must be it. She was lucky she'd chosen to hack in under the pretext of a bored, smart kid playing around, so the A.I. shouldn't be too suspicious. She could probably get around it with enough time and thought and maybe a faster computer, but she didn't have the time for that and the A.I. might decide to alert its master. She backed off, frustrated that she couldn't have a look through the building's cameras or read a personnel list. This was going to complicate things.

As she was frustrated in one problem, her mind came through with a solution to the other:

_Making the Winter Soldier the most wanted man in the world guarantees that he'd be found._  Maggie bit her lip. They'd hidden well, these last two years, but not even they could stay hidden when everyone on the street was looking for their face.

_Who would benefit from finding the Winter Soldier?_

Cold fear washed over Maggie, and she glanced out the window at the JCTC. Bucky was in there, somewhere, along with her brother and hundreds of other agents and civilians.

She didn't know who had done this, but she didn't like it at all. She cracked her fingers and turned back to her laptop, determined to get Bucky out of this.

 

* * *

 

"I can't help you if you don't talk to me, James."

They'd already caught him, why did they need his mind, too? "My name is Bucky," he murmured.

He could still hear Steve's voice in his head, startled and hurt and disbelieving:  _Bucky_?

Meg said that had helped her break away from HYDRA, knowing that a weapon could have a name. He wasn't a weapon any more, and his name sure wasn't James.

 

* * *

 

Five levels up, Tony watched Barnes' evaluation with crossed arms. He'd gained a new respect for psychiatrists since he'd started having panic attacks, but he didn't know what this guy hoped to get from the obviously resistant Barnes.

One of Tony's therapists had said  _you can lead a man to therapy, but you can't make him talk_ , and Tony didn't think that a city-wide chase, a glass prison and a live broadcast were exactly conducive to talking about one's feelings.

Still, he hoped he could talk Ross and the CIA into extraditing Barnes back to the States, instead of Wakanda. And it wasn't just for Steve's sake – if they started a precedent of shipping off their amnesiac assassins for foreign reprisals, what would happen to Maggie when he brought her in?

And after the news about the potential Maggie-sighting on the underpass, Tony had a few questions of his own for the metal-armed fugitive once the JTTF was done with him.

As the psychiatrist talked about the horrors Barnes must have seen, F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke through the earpiece on Tony's sunglasses. "Boss, I've just detected and shut down an attempted electronic infiltration-"

Before F.R.I.D.A.Y. could finish, however, the room plunged into darkness.

 

* * *

 

When the lights in the office went out, Maggie frowned. Then she heard the commotion from outside – beeping horns, shouts, sirens.

Maggie shot to her feet and ran to the window, spotting the blacked-out traffic lights and billboards. At the same time her latest burner phone, purchased in Berlin, buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and read:  _city-wide power outage in Berlin, unknown cause._

"Shit."

Whatever this situation was, whatever the plan was, it was going down now. Discarding all her previous plans, Maggie hastily repacked her bag, straightened her uniform and ran for the stairs.

She'd been two steps behind since this started, she couldn't let herself be late this time.

 

* * *

 

"What the hell is this?" Bucky hadn't trusted the look in the doctor's eyes from the start, but cutting the lights? If they'd meant to confuse him, it was working.

"Why don't we discuss your home?" the doctor suggested. "Not Romania, certainly not Brooklyn, no-" the doctor dug in his bag, and pulled out a book. God, Bucky really didn't want to talk about his notebooks. But the doctor brought the book out fully, and something inside Bucky flinched at the sight of a red cover, and a single black star. "I mean your real home."

Flash memories: a man in a red slouch hat – Colonel Karpov, he recalled – reading from the book, his eyes and voice cold. The Wyvern, just a teenager with a hard face and troubled eyes that only he could read, lying in the snow as a helicopter vanished into a storm.

" _Zhelaniye_ ," [" _Longing,_ "] the doctor read, reading the book by torchlight as he closed the distance between them.

Bucky closed his eyes. " _No._ " He'd had dreams about this, nightmares, but this was  _real_ , the metal holding him down and the cold voice in the darkness-

" _Rzhavyy_." [" _Rusted._ "]

Bucky's mouth was trembling, he couldn't help it- "Stop," he whispered, for all the good he knew it would do.

The doctor came right up to the glass, his eyes hard – the eyes of a killer. " _Semnadtstat_ '." [" _Seventeen._ "]

There were innocent people here,  _Steve_ was here. He knew that someone would use him against Steve, this was why he'd run away.

" _Stop_ ," he growled, the metal arm whirring. He knew Meg couldn't be far, knew that she would try to stop the Soldier–

" _Rassvet_!" [" _Daybreak!_ "] the doctor continued, relentless.

Bucky screamed, against the storm of words in his mind, against the compulsion to obey, against the inexorable doctor in the torchlight who had a book that should never have been written. He ripped free of his restraints, racing against the flow of words.  _H_ _e would stop this, this needed to stop_ – he threw his metal fist at the glass, fighting the cold voice–

" _Gruzovoy vagon!_ " [" _Freight car!_ "]

The Winter Soldier toppled out of the glass prison and knelt on the concrete, dark hair loose around his face.

He rose.

" _Soldat?_ "

" _Gotov podchinit'sya_." [" _Ready to comply._ "]

 

* * *

 

Maggie had to physically push through floods of evacuating civilians to get into the JCTC building, keeping her cap low over her face and her senses strained for whatever was causing the rush of panic emanating from the crowd.

The building was all neat lines and glass panes, and once she stepped out of the flood of people Maggie was able to sweep the main lobby and the major corridors with ease. She didn't know the building layout, thanks to her brother's meddling A.I., but she'd been trained to sweep unfamiliar terrain and she relied on that now.

It was chaos, and no one spared her a second glance as she switched from one group of evacuees to another.

In a quieter passageway, she ran into an agent in a tac suit who shouted " _Alle zivilisten werden evakuiert, du gehst in die falsche richtung!_ " [" _All civilians are being evacuated, you are going the wrong way!_ "]

Maggie called back " _Oberst Rhodes schickte mich!_ " [" _Colonel Rhodes sent me!_ "] And that made the agent hesitate just enough to allow her to slip past and keep running down the corridor. She knew she had a limited window to search before the net closed in and someone realised she wasn't meant to be here.

As she joined a group of civilians jogging through a dark corridor with blinking red lights, they passed a black-suited agent with a radio.

" _Barnes is loose_ ," came a frantic voice over the crackly radio system, " _we've got contact in the cafeteria, request-_ " the voice cut out in a burst of static, and out of the corner of her eye Maggie saw the agent's face go pale.

Heart pounding now, Maggie slipped into another corridor and fell into a full-on sprint, thundering past panicked civilians and agents alike. She followed the corridors to where she thought the cafeteria should logically be, and her heart flipped when she turned a corner to see three crumpled bodies at the end of the passage. There was a fist-shaped hole in the wall.

She ran to the bodies, saw that at least two of them were breathing, and then her head snapped up at the sound of fighting up ahead. A muffled gunshot, shouts, the unmistakable sound of bones and flesh colliding.

Maggie tore down the last corridor and skidded into the open space of the cafeteria, blinking at the bright daylight, eyes darting to assess the situation.

Bodies, broken tables, and  _Bucky_ –

That wasn't Bucky. The man leaning over the woman on the table, dark and menacing with his metal hand around her neck; that was the Winter Soldier.

Maggie didn't have time to think, or to feel.

" _Soldat, pokidat'!_ " [" _Soldier, stand down!_ "]

That made him hesitate – his body automatically reacted to the Russian order, giving Maggie enough time to sprint across the cafeteria floor and knock him bodily away from the choking woman.

The Soldier stumbled, then squared his shoulders and met her eyes.

The blood drained from Maggie's face. It had been so long since HYDRA, she'd forgotten what this was like – looking into those blue-grey eyes and seeing nothing but blankness. Blankness, and murder.

" _Bucky_ ," she choked out, but he only charged at her. Maggie ducked his swinging fist just in time, her body automatically rolling into a dodge and switching into combat – she aimed a kick at his knee, making him stumble once more, and she followed it up by leaping onto his back and hooking an arm around his neck.

"Bucky, the mission!" she cried, but the Soldier got a grip on her arm with his metal limb and he threw her off, sending her skidding across the floor.

Maggie's mind was reeling. She'd fought the Soldier before, but back then she'd been fuelled by hatred and rage. Now, as she jumped to her feet to dodge the Soldier's relentless blows, Maggie was filled with nothing but fear. The Soldier knew how to take advantage of fear.

She clipped him in the jaw, buying herself a moment's reprieve, but then those eyes were back on hers and it was a nightmare made real. She didn't know how to bring him back, it had always taken days for the programming to slip away. Their fight was fast and brutal, barely giving her a second to think.

The Soldier threw a metal-armed punch square at her chest, and she just managed to catch it before it crushed her sternum, though it sent her skidding back. The feel of the metal in her hands jarred her – she'd been holding this hand only a few weeks ago, admiring the grooves and plates. Now it was trying to kill her.

Her instincts were screaming at her to focus, but this was  _Bucky_ and she didn't know how to bring him back.

Gritting her teeth, Maggie launched herself toward the Soldier and kicked him in a move she would normally use her heel spurs for – though of course she wouldn't now – but the Soldier managed to catch her leg, use her momentum against her, and throw her straight through the glass wall of the cafeteria into the kitchen.

Maggie had fallen through walls before, but the force of the Soldier's throw sent her sailing through the first plate of glass and into the next surface, crunching into a fridge display of soft drinks. Her head slammed against the hard surface behind her and she dropped to the floor, stunned.

 

The first thing Maggie was conscious of was a groan – her own – and the sound of tinkling glass. She blinked, and then heard more fighting, further away now.  _Bucky_ , she thought, and she might have said it, but her head was getting clearer every second and she had a mission to carry out.

She got her feet under her, grunting as her aching body complained, and staggered out of the destroyed kitchen. Her wings, still mostly hidden in the backpack cover, had taken the brunt of her collision with the walls, and she didn't think she had a concussion.

Back in the cafeteria Maggie looked around wildly, searching for the Winter Soldier.

But there weren't any more signs of fighting. The cafeteria was silent but for the defeated agents' groaning, and distant sirens. Someone jumped down from the nearby stairs, landing with a catlike grace, and glanced around searchingly.  _King T'Challa_ , Maggie realized – she'd seen him back in Bucharest, wearing that cat suit, and she'd read his name in the JTTF reports. Now the King looked confused, as if he'd lost-

_He got away_ , Maggie realised. A well of panic surged in her gut, washing away any remnants of confusion from her fall and stealing the breath from her chest. She didn't know what the Soldier's orders were, or where he might be going. What he might be going to  _do_.

Maggie took a sharp breath through her nose and took a second to review the room: T'Challa was looking around the corner behind the stairs, now. The room was littered with agents' bodies. The woman Bucky had been strangling had rolled off the table, coughing and gasping for air, and there was a blonde woman groaning on the ruins of a shattered table nearby.

Finally, as her eyes slid sideways, Maggie spotted him. He was unconscious on the floor a few paces behind her, which was why she hadn't noticed him when she first entered the room.

Her mind, normally working at a breakneck pace, simply shut down.

It had been so long since she'd last seen his face, but all it took was once glance and she was a little girl again, small and scared, wishing the world made sense.

_Tony._

Before she knew what she was doing Maggie was kneeling beside his prone body, pressing her shaking fingers against his neck and praying for a pulse. There was blood on his temple and his eyes were closed, but at her touch he mumbled and started to rouse.

The world flooded back in with a rush of sound, though it wasn't that noisy in the cafeteria. Maggie heard her own harsh breathing, distant sirens, and the sound of shouting, distant but closing in. Tony was there under her fingers, her  _brother_. She'd known he was alive but the proof of it, his warm, pulsing veins and the breath in his lungs, was exhilarating. Maggie could hardly believe it, he seemed so real and  _colorful_ , wearing a nice suit, a robotic glove on one hand, and… his eyelashes were fluttering.

She shot to her feet, her fingers tingling where they'd touched her brother, and she stumbled backwards. She couldn't remember what she was doing, why was she-

As she looked frantically around, trying to straighten her mind, she found herself drawn in by a pair of unblinking green eyes on the other side of the room.

It was the woman Bucky had been attacking when she came in; she was propped up against the wall, one hand on her neck, staring at Maggie. The woman had red hair, and Maggie's mess of a mind noted that she was familiar…

Maggie swore internally. This was  _Natasha Romanoff_ , the female target from D.C., the woman she had helped Bucky shoot all those years ago. This woman had no end of bad luck when it came to the Winter Soldier and the Wyvern.

Strangely, it was that thought that helped Maggie to center herself. It was all too much – fighting the Soldier, Tony unconscious and bleeding, he was still  _right there_  – but under the Black Widow's scrutiny Maggie was able to align her thoughts.

Mission priority: find the Winter Soldier, get Bucky back. She couldn't give in to the part of her that burned to turn around and sink beside her brother. He was waking up, he was safe now, and there was nothing more she could do to help here.

With that realization came another: T'Challa had jumped down from the stairwell. The Soldier had been heading up.

Maggie squared her shoulders. Romanoff looked confused by her very presence – she supposed the former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had never seen her face – and she was still injured, so Maggie pressed her advantage. She turned on her heel and was out of the room in three paces, slipping into the still-dark corridors and out of sight.

 

* * *

 

Maggie burst out onto a fire escape at the back of the building, her hair falling out of her cap and her chest heaving with exertion and emotion.

She was about to start pounding up the fire escape to the roof, but she happened to glance at the river almost ten stories below, and her heart sank to the bottom of her feet. The water closest to the JCTC was roiling, disturbed, and her eyes tracked to a snapped-off helicopter rotor on the footpath. Debris fell from the destroyed helipad a few floors up, and Maggie spotted the blue hull of the rest of the helicopter sinking into the river's grey depths.

_I'm too late, again,_ Maggie thought, and suddenly her feet were flying down the metal stairs, her eyes fixed on the disturbed water.  _Only this time he's not getting arrested, he's drowning, or already dead_ -

Maggie reached the second floor and launched herself off the fire escape, rolling to absorb her fall and then sprinting to the edge of the water. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears and the concrete was hard under her feet, and she did a quick scan of the surrounding area as she prepared to leap into the water. There was no one else around, the area had been evacuated, but-

Gasping, Maggie skidded to a halt inches away from the embankment.

Hundreds of feet up the river, a head had emerged from the calm surface. Maggie caught her breath and stared, and her heart leaped into her mouth when a second head joined the first. She was too far away to see clearly, but as she watched, the two heads began moving to the gravel riverbank, hair gleaming with water.

Maggie started running.

She made it to the embankment at the same time the figures did, and the small measure of calm she'd managed to scrape together shattered as she recognised Bucky, limp and dripping as the other man – Steve – heaved him out of the water.

Maggie couldn't move. The bedraggled and panting Steve managed to drag Bucky onto the gravel and lay him down, but Maggie could only watch. Bucky's eyes were closed, his wet hair was plastered across his face, and a wound on his forehead oozed thick, scarlet blood. Maggie felt like her heart was imploding.

Steve finally looked up and spotted her. He shot to his feet, eyes wide, and tensed as if he expected her to attack him. Maggie was aware of his assessing blue gaze but she couldn't meet it, because Bucky's eyes weren't open and he was limp on the ground and it felt like the world was falling down-

Somehow, she managed to speak. "Is he…"

"He's alive," Steve said. He was watching her carefully, and he didn't miss the relief that flooded her face. Maggie realised that Steve had a protective hand hovering over Bucky's body.

She finally looked up from Bucky and met Steve Rogers' eyes. He was dripping river water, but he still somehow managed to look authoritative, in control: there was a furrow between his brows, and his jaw was clenched as he took her in. Maggie didn't know what she looked like – a woman in a nondescript uniform, with shattered glass sprinkled through her hair and clothes, panic and relief no doubt warring in her eyes.

Her eyes flicked back to Bucky, and the slight rise and fall of his chest made her weak at the knees. A faint breeze blew against her face, smelling of river water and aviation fuel.

"We need to get out of here," Steve said, glancing back at the JCTC.

Maggie was so worried about Bucky that she barely heard him, but then her brain kicked into gear. She almost wanted to question him:  _we?_ But if he wanted to get Bucky the hell away from these people then she wasn't going to argue.

She met Steve's eyes, and nodded. "I have a van."

She helped him heave Bucky off the ground, and they each ducked under one of his arms. Maggie's muscles strained under Bucky's dead weight, but Rogers was no slouch – they set a brisk pace away from the river, and Maggie silently led them through the park behind the JCTC toward the office building she'd inhabited not too long ago.

They shuffled forward in silence, though Steve and Maggie's arms bumped together as they carried Bucky between them. Maggie felt numb – she could hardly believe she'd been on a bus into Bucharest only that morning, and she knew that if she thought about her brother she'd fall apart. So she focused on the mission – supporting the dripping wet, unconscious Bucky with Steve Rogers' help, and getting to the van unseen.

They reached the street she'd parked the van on, and luckily the evacuation had cleared the area.

"This way," she murmured.

A second later, she sensed Steve's head turn to look at her. "I'm Steve," he said.

"I know," Maggie replied, as they reached the unremarkable white van. She knew just about everything about him, from his middle name to the asthma attack he'd had his first time in a gentleman's club, to how he used to like his porridge. But this was hardly the time to bring that up.

She swung the back door of the van open. "I'm Maggie."

Steve's eyebrows shot up, but she didn't have time to question that, so she helped him heave Bucky onto the floor of the van. Once Bucky's feet were inside, Maggie took a second to check on him – his head wound was still bleeding, but his breaths were coming evenly, and his arm wasn't making any noise. She wasted a second on pressing two fingers against his pulse, just to reassure herself. His skin was as warm as ever under her fingertips.

She leaned back and met Steve's serious blue eyes. "Get in the back with him," she murmured, reaching into her pocket for the keys. "Restrain him if he wakes up. I'll get us out of here." Without leaving him time to argue, Maggie strode around the length of the van and climbed into the driver's seat. She could hear sirens getting louder, and she knew that in no time agents would flood this street.

Thankfully Steve did as he was told and got in, slamming the door shut behind him. Maggie spared him a glance in the rear view mirror, then gunned the engine and peeled away from the kerb, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

"Wait," Steve said, and when she glanced at him he had one hand on Bucky's chest and his eyes fixed on hers. "We need to pick someone up first."


	36. Chapter 36

 

Joint Counter Terrorist Center, Berlin

Sam stood with his hands on his hips on the pavement outside the JCTC building, surrounded by running civilians and confused law enforcement. It was chaos out here: no one knew who was in charge, and the air was filled with screams and sirens.

He was pissed that the doctor had escaped, and all he had was the guy's jacket.

Frowning, Sam trudged toward the road, trying to think through his next steps. He'd lost Steve in the bowels of the building, but he had no doubt the idiot would've kept going after Barnes. So where-

With a screech of tires, a white van suddenly pulled up in front of him. Sam blinked and looked up, and had to take a step back when the passenger door swung open.

There was a dark-haired woman wearing some kind of uniform in the driver's seat, and  _hey, she looks familiar_ …

"Get in," the woman called, and her eyes flicked to the JCTC behind him.

It took him a second, but Sam connected the dots, combining the woman's focused stare with his memory of the CCTV footage from Chile. He swore loudly and stepped back, glancing around at the running, screaming people around him. The woman scowled.

"It's okay, Sam!" That was Steve's voice, and he was… was he  _in the van_? "We're good, you can get in!"

Sam glanced once more at his surroundings. No one was paying any attention to the van, or his predicament.

"Get in or I'm leaving," the woman hissed.

Certain he'd just agreed to be abducted by a former HYDRA assassin, Sam swore again and climbed into the passenger seat. Before he could buckle himself in, before he could even close the door, the woman –  _Margaret Stark_ – stepped on the gas, tearing away from the JCTC and throwing him back in his seat.

Once he'd shut the swinging door, Sam looked over his shoulder to see Steve, soaking wet and filthy, crouched over an unconscious, equally wet Barnes.

"What the hell."

Steve glanced up from Barnes. "He's out for now, but we need a way to restrain him when he wakes up."

Margaret Stark, who was wearing a goddamn van company uniform and a cap on her head, furrowed her brow as she drove them away from the JCTC, sticking to the speed limit. "I know a place," she said.

Sam glanced from Margaret Stark, to Steve, to Barnes. "What the  _hell_."

 

* * *

 

Maggie ignored the surreptitious and not-so-surreptitious looks from her passengers as she drove the van through Berlin. She was heading for an abandoned warehouse she'd flagged as a potential safehouse in her earlier research. Of course, she'd been planning on using the safehouse for just herself and Bucky, but plans changed, and apparently Captain America went on the run. With his veteran friend. Who was now  _blatantly_ staring at her.

Maggie gritted her teeth and scanned the road ahead for any sign of surveillance or a road block. She'd thought about getting one of the others to drive, so she could monitor any potential pursuers on her laptop, but they were almost at the warehouse. Besides, the mess they'd left at the JCTC would take a while to make any sense of, especially with the power still down.

Gravel crunched under the van's tires as she pulled up outside the warehouse in the quiet industrial district. Maggie eyed the building – dirty, in disrepair, no sign of life in the windows.

She sensed Steve straighten to get a look at the building. "There's no one here?"

Maggie rolled up to the closed loading bay door and recalled the data she'd found on the location. "It's foreclosed upon. Not a popular area for squatters, and the bank put brand-new locks on the doors." She nodded to the loading bay door. "We need that open."

She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, but he seemed hesitant to leave Bucky alone in the van. Wilson was still staring at her, and he was the only one in the van without super soldier serum.

Repressing a sigh, Maggie opened her door and marched toward the warehouse, feeling Steve and Wilson's gazes prickling on her back. She wasn't too worried about leaving them alone with Bucky. If they decided they wanted to drive away, she had a few tricks up her sleeve – or rather, under the faux-backpack on her back. And she wasn't worried about them hurting him, if Steve's unconsciously protective body language was anything to go by.

She gripped the handle of the industrial-strength roller door with both hands, braced her feet and heaved _._ With a  _crack_ of the lock the door groaned open, rolling upwards and revealing the damp, dirty interior of the warehouse.

Maggie dusted off her hands and jogged back to the van – ignoring Wilson's even wider-eyed stare – and drove it into the building. Once it was out of public view, she turned the engine off and jumped out again, this time to open the back door for Steve.

She'd been concentrating on getting to the warehouse, but the sight of Bucky bleeding and unconscious in the back of the van affected her all over again, making her chest ache and her fists clench helplessly. If Steve noticed her pain he didn't say anything. He slid out of the back of the van and slung one of Bucky's arms over his shoulder. Maggie took the other arm, and they dragged him to a room adjoining the main warehouse, where they could see a vice.

"Sam," Steve grunted, and Wilson jogged ahead of them to start cranking the vice open.

Once Wilson had set out a crate, Maggie and Steve eased Bucky down, propping him on the crate and resting his arm on the plate of the vice. As they worked, Maggie noticed bullet holes in the sleeve over his metal arm. She gritted her teeth.

Finally, the vice was clamped over his arm and they stepped back.

Bucky's head was propped against the soldered metal of the vice, his damp hair obscuring his closed eyes and his head wound. He looked like a beaten man, slumped and filthy in an abandoned warehouse. Maggie ran her eyes over his arm, immobilized in the machinery. It wasn't a glass prison, but something about restraining Bucky made her feel queasy. Probably the fact that she had to do it at all.

 _What a mess, Bucky_ , she thought. Just this morning she'd been planning on telling him about her time in Ukraine, maybe cooking together and falling asleep in his arms. Her mind was a mess from everything she'd seen today, and she just didn't have the mental room to process having seen – having  _touched_ – her brother. She wished she could talk to Bucky about it.

While she'd been watching Bucky, her face carefully blank, Steve and Wilson had been trading glances. She could almost hear them thinking.

Eventually Steve turned to face her fully, and Maggie reluctantly dragged her eyes away from Bucky to look back at him.

His face was stoic, serious – Bucky had sometimes called that his  _Captain America face_ – but he seemed to get distracted as he looked at her properly, running his eyes over her features. Everything since the river had been a rush, all about getting Bucky away and restrained, but now Steve had time to look at her. A thoughtful expression filled his eyes.

Maggie kept her face neutral – it was the only thing she could think of to do, under such appraisal. Wilson was a few steps away, glancing between the two of them.

They were all surprised when Maggie was the one to break the silence. "What they're saying he did in Vienna, that wasn't him." She was surprised how even her voice was.

Steve crossed his arms, and now his gaze was a little harder. "I know."

That took her aback. She'd been expecting to have to convince him, especially after the disaster at the JCTC, but then she remembered all the stories about Steve's blind faith in Bucky.

But Steve continued: "It was the doctor, he set it up to get alone in a room with Bucky." He didn't look away from her face, watching intently for her reaction.

Maggie couldn't help the way her expression darkened. She  _knew_ it was going to be something like that. Whoever this doctor was, he'd done all that to get to Bucky, and if Bucky went into the JCTC as Bucky and came out the Soldier, then…

Maggie swallowed. Whoever the doctor was, he had Bucky's trigger words.  _He'd_ done this to Bucky, had turned him into a weapon and fired him at innocent people.

Maggie noticed that the anger sparking in her chest was showing in her face, and she quickly shut it down.

Steve levelled his gaze at her. "What do you know about the doctor?"

Maggie looked from Bucky's unconscious face, to Wilson's suspicious stare, to Steve's angry righteousness, and clenched her fist. She mentally ran through a list of people who might know Bucky's words, but her memory wasn't anywhere close to perfect. Besides, Steve and Wilson were strangers to her, and her base instincts went against revealing anything about the trigger words or their HYDRA programming. She knew Bucky had trusted Steve with his life seventy years ago, but Steve had been in this new world for five years.

"I don't know about any doctor," she eventually murmured. "What did he look like?"

Steve gave a short, terse description, and she could sense him getting more suspicious. She might be resistant to opening up to relative strangers, but she needed them on her side. Maggie desperately tried to think, getting nothing but a sharp headache blooming behind her eyes.

"I don't know," she said helplessly, and met Steve's eyes. "Whoever he is, he knew the Winter Soldier words-"

"Words?"

"Trigger words," Maggie said bitterly. "All he would have had to do was say them, and he'd have the Winter Soldier at his disposal." Her voice was cold, and her face was hard. She'd promised she wouldn't let it happen to Bucky ever again, and she'd failed him.

Steve tried a different tack. "Why?"

Maggie shrugged. "To cause chaos? For information? I don't know. Bucky should be able to tell us, when he wakes up."

Both of their eyebrows raised at her use of his nickname, but Maggie didn't care anymore. Her head was throbbing, she didn't know what to do.

Steve finally took his eyes off her face, glancing back at Bucky. "Which Bucky is he going to be?"

Maggie followed his gaze to Bucky, bleeding and unconscious in a vice, and her heart ached. She knew she could bring him back, given time, but… "I don't know," she whispered.

A silence fell at that, and Maggie couldn't bring herself to meet Steve's eyes again. She'd wanted to meet him for a while now, after hearing all Bucky's stories, but she'd never actually thought she would. An interrogation in a foreclosed warehouse wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind.

Wilson broke the silence next, drawing her attention. "So what's your deal? It's you, right, you're the Wyvern?"

Maggie bristled. She'd guessed they knew she was the Wyvern, going off Steve's wariness and Wilson's fear, but it had been a long time since anyone had called her that. "Not anymore," she bit out.

Wilson, to his credit, didn't look away. "Then who are you?"

She was getting annoyed at the interrogation, she just wanted a few moments to process everything that had happened. But she supposed they did have a right to ask some questions, after she'd tried to kill them a bunch of times and then showed up with a van and a safehouse. She sighed. "I'm Maggie."

Her eyes flickered between the two men, and she could  _feel_ the unsaid things. She saw the glance they shared, she saw that they recognised the name.

Something tightened in her gut. "You know who I am."

Simultaneously, they nodded. A sickened feeling washed over Maggie, and abruptly she could feel the edges of a panic attack clawing at her throat.

She cleared her throat, and made sure her voice was absolutely steady before she spoke. "Does he know that I'm alive?" She put the barest inflection on the word  _he,_ but they all knew who she was talking about.

Wilson looked to Steve. Steve looked back at her, and she could see compassion in his eyes. The warmth of it, after his resoluteness and suspicion, made her want to step back. Steve opened his mouth.

"Yes."

A whole rush of emotion hit Maggie, clobbered her from all sides like a hailstorm, like an attack. She wanted to ask a million questions: how long? How much does he know? Did he come for me? But she swallowed the questions, because she suddenly thought she was going to be sick.

She managed to stammer out: "I'm going to watch the perimeter," and was gone before they could object.

 

* * *

 

Sam and Steve watched Maggie flee the room, her face deathly white and her eyes round with panic.

Sam ran a hand over his face. This was already an enormous mess, and now there was  _her_. She'd been cooperative enough, but he just didn't understand what her motives were.

"Think she's going to be on our side?" he asked, and the words echoed in the dusty warehouse.

Steve sighed. "She's here for him," he nodded at Barnes. "I don't know why, but that's the best we can ask for now."

"And if he's not the Bucky you remember when he wakes up? If he tries to fight you again? What's she going to do then?"

Steve met Sam's eyes, and Sam was glad to see that at least he was putting some thought into this. "She helped us get him here and put him in the vice," he eventually said. "I don't think she wants violence."

Sam wasn't so sure about that – he'd seen the way her anger crackled in the air around her when Steve explained how Barnes had been set up. But he supposed she'd been cooperative, when she probably could have killed them both by now, so he let it go.

They couldn't do anything until Barnes woke up, so Sam took watch and Steve went to scope out the warehouse. Who knew what Maggie was doing.

 

* * *

 

Maggie was hiding in the shadows outside the warehouse, breathing through the end of her panic attack. She'd spent two years building up her coping mechanisms, but it seemed they could only do so much against the day she'd just had: Bucky's arrest and triggering, her hasty attempts to catch up, seeing her brother.

Shuddering, Maggie pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and took a long breath through her nose. Images of her brother, unconscious and bleeding, played behind her eyes.

She hoped he was alright. She realised that Tony must have been knocked unconscious fighting the Soldier –  _without his suit, what was he thinking?_ – and another wave of nausea hit. He was lucky he hadn't been killed.  _By Bucky._ Maggie had to lean over, sure she was going to be sick.

 _He'll be okay,_ she told herself. He'd been waking up when she left, and he had his teammates and colleagues with him. Rhodey was there, and she remembered how close they'd been. The Black Widow was there too, and they'd been teammates for years.  _He'll be okay_.

But she didn't know if she believed it. She wondered what his life had been like, knowing that she was alive. Suddenly, her shoulders sagged in exhaustion, and she leaned against the side of the warehouse with her hands still over her eyes.

_What a mess._

It took her a while to get a handle on herself, but she'd faced brainwashing and nightmares and remorse before, and she was still here. She didn't push away her feelings, because she'd promised herself not to do that any more. She allowed herself to feel, acknowledged the feelings, and then got on with business.

Maggie stealthed back into the warehouse – she didn't really want to deal with Steve or Wilson again until she had to – and retrieved her backpack and laptop from the van. As she climbed up into the rafters of the warehouse, she thought her situation through.

She was on the run – that was nothing new, she'd been on the run for two and a half years. Of course there was a lot more heat now, and two hangers-on who were – understandably – suspicious of her. Until Bucky woke up – and hopefully he woke up as Bucky, not the Soldier – there wasn't much she could do except monitor potential pursuers and keep them hidden.

Once she found a good vantage point in a shadowy corner of the ceiling, perched on some relatively sturdy scaffolding, Maggie pulled out her laptop. She made sure her digital footprint was utterly untraceable – she needed the tech more than ever now, but she couldn't allow anyone to find it. Keeping one eye on the warehouse below, particularly her partial view of Wilson watching Bucky, Maggie checked on the JTTF situation, careful to avoid Tony's A.I.

Everyone was searching for Bucky, Steve and Sam, but it didn't seem that any mention of her had made her way into the reports. It seemed the attack on the JCTC was too fresh for anyone to have arranged any kind of coordinated approach. They were dealing with their headquarters being all smashed up and evacuated, and had alerted local law enforcement about the fugitives.

Maggie could hear a few helicopters roaming the sky, and surreptitiously listened in on their communications to make sure they weren't aware of the fugitives in the warehouse. As it stood, they had time before the net closed in.

After a few minutes, she noticed Wilson walk into the main part of the warehouse out of the corner of her eye. "Hey, Cap!" he called.

Maggie's heart leapt into her mouth. There was no mistaking the nervousness in Wilson's bearing, or the significant look he shot at Steve. Steve, who had just been peering out at the nearest helicopter, turned around and jogged toward Wilson.

It took Maggie a few seconds to power down the laptop, put it in the backpack and climb down from her perch. Her fingers were shaking.  _Which Bucky is he going to be?_

As she hit the ground and started half walking, half jogging to the room with the vice, she heard Bucky's low voice: "Your mom's name was Sarah."

The rush of relief that hit Maggie made her feel dizzy, and she had to stop walking to press a hand to her forehead. With her eyes closed, she just caught his next words, tinged with a half-laugh: "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."

She hadn't heard that one before. It must have been a new recall.

Alone in the open space of the warehouse, Maggie took a few moments to steady herself. This day had been a whirlwind of emotions; fear and hope and heartbreak. She allowed herself a few moments to be relieved, then calmed herself and appeared in the doorway to the next room just as Bucky said: "Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there, all he had to do was say the goddamn words."

He looked terrible. Filthy and bloody, hair dishevelled. But it was more than that – his face was twisting with emotion, his guilt and horror gleaming in his eyes as he looked up at his oldest friend. He sagged against the vice. Maggie's chest constricted, and her heart physically ached for him.

She'd appeared soundlessly, just behind Wilson in the doorway, while Bucky was looking up at Steve. But they'd always had a kind of sixth sense for the others' presence, and almost as soon as she appeared Bucky turned to look at her, his eyes grey and tired behind his dark hair.

The instant he saw her, Bucky's eyes deepened with complicated emotion. But Maggie had been reading those eyes her whole life, and she could see all his confusion and concern and relief. His eyes darted to Steve and Wilson, brow furrowed, but then he was looking back at her.

He was surrounded by concrete and metal, wearing a shirt with bullet holes in it, but this wasn't the Winter Soldier. This was the man she loved. Maggie didn't know what her eyes were showing him – probably much of the same: relief and concern. His brows furrowed as he watched her.

The room had gone quiet. Sam and Wilson followed Bucky's gaze to Maggie, and if they were surprised at her sudden appearance they didn't say anything.

Finally, Bucky spoke. "Thought you were going dark." His words were slightly slurred, and Maggie's brows pinched in concern.

She cleared her expression, and shrugged. "Had a mission to complete."

Something sparked in his eyes – relief, love, a complicated mixture of the two, and it made her heart melt. She swallowed. "He knew your words?"

There was a long pause as Bucky looked at her. She knew he was reading her eyes, and she knew he was seeing that she had met the Soldier again. She didn't know how to hide the truth from him, didn't know if she wanted to. Eventually, Bucky hung his head.

"I don't know if he knows yours as well," he sighed.

Wilson piped up at that. "This could happen to you, too?"

Maggie glanced away from Bucky and shot Wilson a look. Then she glanced at Steve, warily, but he wasn't focused on her. He was watching his friend, and Maggie was startled at the open look of grief on his face – his brows were furrowed, his mouth downturned, and his eyes were bright with pain. Maggie swallowed.

But as she watched, that same look of resolve slipped over Steve's features, and his shoulders straightened. "Who was he?" he asked.

Bucky glanced up and whispered: "I don't know."

"People are dead. The bombing, the set up, the doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you." Steve levelled his gaze at Bucky, who seemed to droop with every word. "I need you to do better than I don't know."

Maggie and Wilson watched silently. Maggie wanted to be angry at Steve for pushing Bucky so hard right after he'd come back to himself, but she knew he was right – only Bucky knew what this doctor had said, what he wanted. Maggie wanted Bucky to spit it out so she could go find the doctor and… she swallowed. She didn't know if she could be as lenient as she was with Vincent Silva.

Bucky was thinking, his eyes focusing and darting from side to side. "He wanted to know about Siberia," he said. "Where I was kept." Bucky cocked his head. "He wanted to know exactly where."

Maggie tensed, her hands balling into fists at her sides and her face shuttering. She remembered howling snow, the Soldier's bloody face. The Project Leader clutching his reddening stomach. Wilson noticed her reaction and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Why would he need to know that?" asked Steve.

She could see Bucky remembering. His eyes flickered toward Maggie, then rose to meet Steve's gaze. "Because I'm not the only Winter Soldier."

Maggie inhaled, fresh memories crowding together at the front of her mind and making a piercing ache bloom behind her eyes.

She remembered: the bald man with the severe stare. The Project Leader's taunting in cold concrete passageways. Darkened cryochambers.

Maggie gritted her teeth. She'd remembered parts of this, but not all. Other parts of her time in Siberia had seemed more important. And as long as the memories stayed between she and Bucky, it hadn't mattered. But now, this man – this  _doctor_ – knew about the Winter Soldier Program.

Maggie felt cold. She felt as cold as she had when she lay bleeding in the howling Siberian snow, watching Karpov's helicopter disappear into the storm.

 

As Bucky explained the Winter Soldier Program, Wilson cranked the vice open to free his arm. Maggie wanted to help, but she couldn't – her feet were rooted to the spot, frozen by memories of snow and blood and blue liquid. She did keep an eye on Bucky's head wound and his eyes, but it didn't seem that he'd suffered any permanent damage. So she stood there, and listened.

Bucky glanced at her throughout his explanation, but she didn't have anything to add. When he said that HYDRA had sent him after a synthesis of the super soldier serum, Maggie swallowed her memories of a burning car, the Soldier's footsteps in the gravel. This wasn't the time for that, it wasn't the point.

He talked about how the b _atal'on smerti_ [ _death squad_ ] had been given the serum, and she remembered how the blue liquid had felt cold travelling through her veins, before it flared into an unbearable, scorching heat. She shivered.

He explained how the Winter Soldiers had disobeyed orders, fought their handlers. She didn't know that part, she'd only ever heard the Project Leader's snide allusions.  _Of course they had been tested against the Soldier,_  Maggie thought bitterly, as she listened to Bucky's hollow voice. Karpov had been jealous, determined to do better than the Project Leader. Bucky's life was nothing, when it came to those men.

She remembered the bald man –  _Borya_ – and how his share of the serum had been reallocated to the Wyvern Project. She remembered his rage, remembered how it had felt when her heel spur sliced right through his flesh and bone, piercing his heart.

Steve was leaning against the concrete wall, arms crossed and face serious. "Who were they?"

"Their most elite death squad," Bucky said, his tired eyes focused on the ground. "More kills than anyone in HYDRA history, and that was before the serum."

Sam was against the doorway, by the fuse box. "They all turn out like you?" he asked.

"Worse."

Maggie swallowed. "One of those soldiers  _without_ the serum nearly killed me when I was fifteen," she added, and their gazes all swung to her. She crossed her arms. "I'd have enough trouble on my hands facing one of them now, let alone four."

She and Bucky met each other's eyes for a moment, and his gaze softened.

"The doctor," Steve said, "could he control them?"

"Enough."

Steve grimaced. "Said he wanted to see an empire fall-"

"With these guys he could do it," Bucky urged. "They speak thirty languages, can hide in plain sight, infiltrate, assassinate, destabilise." As he spoke, Maggie closed her eyes. She thought she'd left this world behind. But it turned out she'd just been waiting for it to catch up with her.

"They can take a whole country down in one night," Bucky continued, "and you'd never see them coming." He met Steve's eyes, showing him how serious he was, then turned to Maggie. "Peters might have underestimated the program."

It was Maggie's turn to grimace now. She didn't  _care_ about Project Leader Peters. But she noted that neither Steve nor Wilson seemed to need to ask who Peters was, and that worried her. If they knew about him, did they know about the Wyvern Project? Did they know about her long, bloody past?

Sam pushed off the wall and walked towards Steve, and something about that action gave her the ability to move again. She paced forward, her legs sluggish, and came to stand by Bucky's shoulder. His elbows were resting on his knees, and his head hung between his shoulders, but as she approached he looked up and met her eyes.

Maggie didn't know what to say. And judging by the glimmering brightness in Bucky's blue-grey eyes, he didn't know either. So she reached out, hovering her hand just over his shoulder, and cocked an eyebrow, asking. He nodded, and her hand came to rest on his tatty red shirt. Just the feel of him, warm skin and worn cloth, eased some of her bone-deep exhaustion, and judging by the way the muscles across his back loosened and stretched she had a similar effect on him. Maggie increased the pressure of her fingertips, just slightly, so she was holding him. Bucky's eyes welled with emotion and his head dropped again. A long, slow breath shuddered in his chest.

Her back was to Steve and Wilson, but she could hear their conversation.

"This would have been a lot easier a week ago," Wilson murmured, as if she and Bucky didn't have enhanced hearing.

"If we call Tony-"

Maggie stiffened, her fingers inadvertently clenching on Bucky's shoulder. His head jumped up, but she couldn't look at him. Her gaze was fixed on the pocked grey concrete of the far wall.

"No, he won't believe us," Wilson whispered. "And his focus might be elsewhere, y'know."

Maggie swallowed, and looked at her feet. There was a sliver of glass wedged into the side of her boot, she noticed. Bucky's shoulder bunched under her hand, and she realized she was probably holding on a little too tightly to be comfortable. She loosened her grip, and felt Bucky's eyes on her, but she couldn't meet them. She'd cry, she just knew she would.

"Even if he did-" Steve started.

"Who knows if the Accords would let him help," Wilson finished.

Steve sighed. "We're on our own."

"Maybe not," Wilson muttered. Steve must have given him a questioning look, because he added: "I know a guy."

After that, Steve and Wilson seemed to have some kind of nonverbal conversation, because there was nothing but silence in the warehouse. Maggie sensed their attention turn to her and Bucky, and then she felt their gazes on her hand like a prickling brand. She pulled the hand away from Bucky's shoulder.

She gave herself enough time to compose her face, then turned around. She stood tall over Bucky's shoulder, silent and neutral.

Steve's face was set in serious lines as he looked between them. "You with us on this?"

Simultaneously, Bucky and Maggie turned to look at each other. It only took them a second to read each other's eyes, before they turned back.

"Yes," Bucky answered for them both. "We're with you."

Maggie just met Steve's eyes and showed him her conviction. That was apparently good enough for him, because he nodded once and then said: "Alright, let's get to work."

 

* * *

 

Joint Counter Terrorist Center, Berlin

Secretary Ross loomed over Tony in the conference room, but Tony couldn't let him bring in the special forces to take out his friends, regardless of how stupid they were being.

"Seventy two hours," Tony said, once Ross looked like he was going to let him do this.

"Thirty six hours," Ross countered, his eyes hard. "Barnes." He started to leave the room. "Rogers. Wilson!"

He walked away, leaving Tony and Natasha alone in the room. Tony let out a breath - everything since he'd woken up in the cafeteria had been a whirlwind of sirens, debriefs, and Ross shouting.

Natasha, bolt upright in her chair, looked worried, and that unsettled Tony more than Ross's bureaucratic bullshit. He straightened, about to say something, but then something in his chest twinged and he had to lean forward, rubbing one hand against his sternum.  _Man,_ Barnes packed a hell of a punch. So much for on duty non-combatant.

"My left arm is numb, is that normal?" He asked, because even though she'd never admit it, Natasha needed someone who could make light of a situation. At least, that was his theory for why she kept Barton around.

It seemed to work – Natasha stood, and came to rest her hand on his shoulder. "You alright?"

"Always," he replied, startled by the warmth in her voice.

At that, Natasha crossed her arms and looked out through the glass wall. "Tony…"

Something about her tone made him glance up, fingers still probing his bruised and aching chest. Her lips were pursed, and she seemed to be searching for words.

"What's up?"

She met his eyes. "I saw your sister."

Whatever he'd been expecting her to say, it wasn't that. He froze, and searched Natasha's face for a lie. He'd never be able to spot one if she didn't want him to, but something about the nervous compassion in her eyes made his heart lurch.

Instantly, his brain got to work: Natasha had barely left his side since Steve and the others arrived at the facility, so when…? He sighed. When he'd been knocked unconscious by the fight with Barnes, of course. So Steve had probably been right when he said he saw her in Bucharest – for whatever reason, Maggie was ghosting Barnes' footsteps, just out of sight.

After a few seconds of silence Tony reached up to pinch his nose, then winced when he brushed his bruised cheek. "She was here?"

Natasha's brow was heavy. "I think it was her. She told Barnes to stand down, in Russian, probably saved my life. Then she called him Bucky. He got away from her, but…" she cocked her head as she looked down at Tony. "She checked your pulse, while you were out."

Tony's hand flew to his neck as if he'd been stung, and he pressed his fingers against his skin, where he could feel his own erratic heartbeat. She'd been close enough to touch him. What had been going through her head? Did she remember him?

"Where did she go?" he eventually asked, his voice rough. His fingers, still pressed against his neck, picked up on the vibrations of his voice travelling up his throat.

"I didn't see. I'm sorry."

Tony waved a hand to indicate that she didn't need to be – he could see the purple marks on her neck even now. He sighed. "God, you know, I try to focus on the job, but things are starting to hit real close to home, and…"

"I know," Natasha murmured. "But if she shows up again, we'll deal with it. Bring her in from the cold. If it can be done for me, it can be done for anyone."

Tony squeezed his eyes shut, still touching his own neck. "She really doesn't want to be found."

He heard the rustle of leather as Natasha shrugged. "Won't stop you finding her."

"That's true," he muttered, vaguely appreciative of Nat for knowing him so well.

Okay, his sister had been in this building. He could handle that, surely. He appreciated that Natasha hadn't mentioned it while Ross was in the room. In amongst everything else going on, he really didn't think this was the time to be admitting to authorities that his sister was alive as an ex-HYDRA assassin. He doubted he could convince Ross he was able to be objective in that case.

For now, he had a job to focus on. "Thirty six hours, thirty six hours…"

Natasha seemed to welcome the shift in conversation. "We're seriously understaffed."

"Oh yeah. Be great if we had a Hulk, right about now. Any shot?"

 _God_ , he missed Bruce. It felt like he'd just been steadily losing people throughout his life, one after the other. He was sure Bruce would have something sufficiently boring and diplomatic to say in this situation.

Natasha's smile was crooked. "You really think he'd be on our side?"

Right. Secretary Ross and Bruce had not had a great past. Tony frowned.

"I have an idea," Nat said.

Tony's brain had been chugging away since he woke up to find out Barnes, Steve, and Wilson had escaped. "Me too. Where's yours?"

"Downstairs…?" She cocked her head. "Where's yours?"

Despite himself, despite the tingling in his chest and arm, and the way his neck felt like it had been branded, Tony smiled.


	37. Chapter 37

 

Abandoned Warehouse, Outskirts of Berlin

Steve rallied his thoughts, contemplating the resources he had at his disposal: a single white panel van, nothing in the way of weapons, and no real way to get to Siberia. He had Sam, as always, who was currently standing to his left, arms crossed. He had Bucky, finally, though he looked exhausted and beaten. Every time Steve looked at him a thrill went down his spine, because he'd missed Bucky for so long and he was  _finally there._ Of course, these weren't great circumstances.

And he had  _Maggie_ , who so far was a total mystery. It was clear that she and Bucky knew each other well, and that she was determined to help find the doctor, but he couldn't read her carefully blank face or the nonverbal communication that seemed to flow back and forth between she and Bucky. She'd looked profoundly disturbed through Bucky's explanation of Siberia and the Winter Soldier Program, but she'd gotten it under control, smoothing her expression and disguising her feelings. It reminded him of Natasha, and he remembered they had both been trained by the same woman, at different points in time.

"Alright," Steve said, straightening. "If we're going to go after this guy, we need soldiers. Sam, who did you say your guy was?"

Sam shifted his weight nervously. "His name's Scott Lang, he's got this suit… helps him to go really small. Like, so small that you can barely see him. He's good in a fight."

Steve cocked an eyebrow.

Sam sighed. "He's called Ant-Man."

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw Maggie and Bucky share a cynical glance. He couldn't help but agree, but Sam seemed sure about this.

"Think he'll want to help us?"

"He seemed like a pretty good guy, I think if we explain the situation he'll want to help. We'll have to get him from San Francisco, though."

Steve nodded, deep in thought. "I was planning on calling Clint, I think he'd be interested in helping Wanda get out of the compound. And they'll both want to help stop the doctor. They could pick up Lang."

Bucky and Maggie listened silently, a few feet apart. If they were confused by the names being thrown around, they didn't show it.

"Not to mention we'll need our stuff back," Sam sighed. "Think Sharon would help?"

Steve's gut twisted at the thought of getting Sharon further into this mess, but he had to admit that they could use her help right now. "It's worth a try," he nodded. "So we need to get in contact with Clint and Sharon. We could try to find a payphone somewhere around here, but that'll pin us with a pretty identifiable location." He rubbed his jaw, thinking. Nat had always been better at this stuff than him. He was a soldier, not a spy. "We could pick up a burner phone somewhere, but…"

As he spoke, Maggie leaned down to a black backpack she'd brought into the room with her, and pulled something out of the front pocket. Steve noticed that she already had a backpack on her back, oddly bulgy, and he wondered why she needed two. Straightening, Maggie opened her palm to reveal… a phone.

Steve blinked, looking from the glossy flip phone to Maggie's face. She kept it carefully blank, like Natasha and Clint did with strangers, but there was an openness in her gaze that startled him. Every time he looked at her he was struck by her similarity to Tony and Howard – her dark hair and brows, and the intelligence glittering in those brown eyes.

Apparently fed up with his stunned blinking, Maggie stepped forward and offered him the phone.

He took it, and shot her an assessing look. "… Thanks."

"You're welcome," she replied, with a ghost of a smile, and stepped back to her bag. Steve could sense Bucky glancing between the two of them, an unreadable look on his face.

"What else you got in there?" Sam piped up, squinting at her bag as if it might contain the secrets to the universe.

Unbeknownst to Steve and Sam, Maggie ran a mental checklist: the bag contained tools and tech, including a laptop and an iPod packed with hits from the last eighty years, false IDs for her trip to Ukraine, a pair of red goggles and dark gauntlets with barbed fingers, and a meagre collection of her treasured possessions: postcards from Bucky, a pair of safety goggles, a fading Rubik's cube.

Maggie pushed the bag behind her with the heel of her boot, obscuring it from their view. "Nothing."

Steve saw Sam's eyes narrow, but he didn't push further. Sighing, Steve powered up the phone and began tapping away, forming coded messages to send to Clint and Sharon.

The light outside the warehouse was fading, signalling the end of what had been an impossibly long day. Even though his focus was on the phone, Steve could tell that the atmosphere in the warehouse was still tense. They were all a few feet apart, and Steve could sense Sam's confusion, suspicion and curiosity rolling off him in waves. Bucky looked exhausted, still slumped on the dirty crate.

Predictably, Sam eventually spoke up. "I'm Sam," he said, eyes flickering between Maggie and Bucky.

"I know," Maggie said, and Steve glanced up. Sam's eyes narrowed further, and Maggie swallowed, as if regretting the words. Eventually, after working her jaw a moment or so, she spoke again: "I'm… sorry for trying to kill you." Her eyes flickered toward Steve, including him in the apology. He nodded once and went back to texting Sharon.

"Me too," Bucky chipped in. But he didn't stop shooting suspicious glances at Sam, and Maggie suddenly remembered a conversation a few months ago in which Bucky had referred to the Falcon as  _that guy who shot you._

There were a few seconds of silence while Sam processed that. "Alright," he eventually said, starting to nod. "Alright, sure. I'm sorry about…" he gestured vaguely, seemingly encompassing both Maggie and Bucky, and the entire world. This was followed up by an uncomfortable grimace. Bucky levelled him with an unimpressed look.

Before things could get any more awkward, Steve finally finished with the burner phone and looked up. "Okay, that's done. I'll need to wait for their replies, so do you mind if I hang on to this, Maggie?" He held up the phone.

Bucky tensed at Steve's use of her name, and Steve cocked an eyebrow, but Maggie didn't react. "Sure."

"Okay," Sam said. "What now?"

Maggie cleared her throat. "If we're planning on moving, we'll need to change vehicles. That van's going to be missed sooner or later."

Steve acknowledged her with a nod. "We need to get out of the city, and wait to arrange a meeting location with Sharon and Clint. As for uniforms, hopefully Sharon will be able to get our gear to us, Sam." He turned his gaze to Bucky, pushing through the part of him that was still a twenty-year-old kid excited to see his best friend. "Buck, you've got the arm, and we're enhanced-"

Bucky's head swivelled to look at Maggie, and his eyes flicked – curiously – to her backpack straps and then back to her face, a questioning look in his eyes. Maggie nodded, her eyes flickering with meaning as she acknowledged him.

Sam cleared his throat. "Uh, what was that about?"

Steve had to agree.

Bucky's arm whirred, and Maggie sighed.

"It's not just the arm," she said, and then shrugged off her backpack. Only it wasn't a backpack – it was just a cover, and once it was removed, Steve could see the glint of metal over her shoulders.

Steve's eyebrows shot up his forehead. Before his eyes, metal unfurled from Maggie's back, extending into two sleek, sharp, black and gunmetal grey wings. The wings spanned the warehouse room, and Steve stared as the black webbing stretched and the metal skeleton extended telescopically, slotting into place.

The tension in Maggie's frame seemed to melt away, as if having the wings loose and stretched was easing her posture. To her left, Bucky's face softened.

Steve raised his eyebrows. He hadn't been able to see the wings properly all those years ago, since the woman attached to them had been trying to kill him at the time, but now that he had a moment to take them in, he could admit that they were a technological work of art. He'd been in the future long enough to see expertly made machines when he saw them, and this was the real deal. The wings seemed almost fluid, the metal sliding and shifting like living flesh and bone, and his eyes picked out the tiny, incredibly powerful engines alongside the sharp metal barbs.

Steve found himself wanting to draw the wings, in the same way he'd wanted to draw his shield the first time he saw it, or the Iron Man armor.

Steve glanced back at the metal limbs curving over Maggie's shoulders, and remembered the scans of her body with metal on her bones that he'd seen in Canada. He hadn't understood a lot of it, but he realised that it was that reinforcement that allowed her to wear these complex mechanical wings.

"You've got aerial support if you need it, Captain," Maggie murmured, and Steve met her eyes. He was startled by how  _normal_ she looked, despite the metal wings protruding from her back. Before, when she'd been the Wyvern, he'd had trouble thinking of her as more than a faceless, almost robotic assassin. It might have been because of her face mask and malicious-looking goggles, or it might have been the brainwashing.

When he'd spotted her on the riverbank after saving Bucky, she'd seemed small and scared.

But now, it seemed Maggie was in her element. This was  _her_ , this woman with intelligent eyes and powerful metal wings, offering her help. Steve was struck by the sudden well of respect he felt for her.

Sam, meanwhile, was gaping. "Are those always attached to you?"

"No," Maggie said, and shuffled her wings a little closer to her body. Steve couldn't see her making any subtle hand or shoulder movements, like Sam had to do to control his wings, and he suddenly recalled reading something about  _cybernetic linkups_ in the data about her at the Québec base. Maggie continued: "But the way things are going, I don't plan on taking them off."

"Fair," Sam acknowledged.

Bucky cleared his throat. "Meg and I don't have combat gear, though, we'll need to pick something up."

Steve frowned, glancing from Bucky to Maggie. "Meg?"

She sighed. "It's a long story."

 

* * *

 

 _Another_ awkward silence fell after Maggie revealed her wings and Bucky called her Meg. Maggie was still feeling a little uncomfortable about exposing her wings, but something about the way Steve had looked at her eased the discomfort – he'd been surprised, at first, but that settled into awe, and then some kind of understanding. He hadn't been afraid of her, or disgusted. It was as if things suddenly made sense for him.

Maggie shared a glance with Bucky – they were both feeling the awkwardness of the silence that had fallen.

Steve rallied himself. "Alright, we'll track down a new vehicle, then pick up combat gear, and lie low until we meet with Sharon and Clint. Let's go."

"Wait."

Steve, Sam and Maggie all blinked and glanced at Bucky, who stood up from the crate by the vice. His face was grim, and he met Steve's eyes. Maggie cocked her head.

"Something else?" Steve asked.

"I need…" he glanced at Maggie. "A minute."

Some of the tension left Steve's shoulders at the realisation that there weren't any more terrible HYDRA secrets to reveal. Still, he seemed hesitant. "Buck, we're on the clock, here-"

"Steve." Bucky's eyes were serious. "Just one minute."

Steve sighed, and relented. He and Sam walked off into the larger room, to strip any evidence of their being in the van.

The moment they were out of eyesight, Maggie and Bucky moved towards each other. Bucky seemed a little cautious but Maggie wasn't having any of that – she stepped right into his space, slinging her arms around his neck and pulling him into her. Bucky's arms wrapped around her back, hesitant, just below where her wings were moored in her spine. Maggie closed her eyes when he sighed and sank into her, burying his face in her hair and tightening his grip on her.

He smelled like sweat, fuel and river water but she had him now, safe and warm, and her heart pounded against her rib cage with relief. She let her hand drift up to the nape of Bucky's neck, fingers tangling in his hair.

After a long moment Bucky leaned back a little, his stubble scratching her ear as he pulled away. His blue-grey eyes were sombre.

"Did I hurt you?"

Maggie sighed, loosening her grip around his shoulders and meeting his eyes. She didn't want to lie to him. "Yes. But I'm okay-" she hurried on to say, as horror and self-loathing burst into Bucky's expression. "Really. You were the Soldier, and I tried to stop you-"

His horror shifted to exasperation. "Meg-"

"Are you saying you wouldn't try to stop me?" She shot him a challenging look, and when he didn't argue she continued. "You threw me through a wall, but I'm fine now. You just…" she ran her eyes over his face, to reassure herself that he was okay. "You had me really worried, Bucky."

He sighed and leaned in again, pressing his forehead against hers. "I'm sorry, doll." Their words were low, so as not to carry into the next room, and Bucky's breath brushed against her lips.

"It's really not your fault," Maggie said with a small smile. Then her face darkened. "I'm going to make sure that doctor gets justice for what he's done."

Bucky's metal fingers brushed against her cheek, and she realised she was glaring into the middle distance. She shook herself.

"I'm so sorry, Bucky," she sighed. "I promised you I wouldn't let anyone use your words against you again, and then I wasn't even  _there_ , I couldn't help-"

"It ain't your fault," Bucky urged. "This is… a lot bigger than us." He looked so lost, so defeated, that her heart ached.

"Sure is." Maggie took a long breath through her nose. "I saw my brother."

"What?" Bucky pulled his forehead away from hers and looked into her eyes. "Where?"

She explained, and Bucky's face fell again at another reminder of his violence. "Doll, I'm-"

"Don't apologise!" she interrupted, and reached up to squeeze his metal hand, to soften the words. "You and I understand what it's like, to hear those words. So we both know that you weren't responsible."

Bucky closed his eyes. "I know, I'm just… I'm sorry he got hurt."

"Me too."

"You going to be alright?"

She sighed. "Better now you're awake. How are you feeling?"

Bucky's eyes darkened, and she watched him swallow. "Not… not great. I'm angry, Meg."

Maggie leaned in again, running a hand through his hair the way she knew he liked, and pressed her face into his neck. She breathed in the smell of his skin, so glad he was alive.

"Me too," she breathed, and squeezed his metal hand again. They didn't need to say more – they  _knew_ how the other felt, and there wasn't anything they could say to make it better.

Once they leaned apart, Bucky gave her a small, sad smile and her heart skipped a beat. "So how was Ukraine?"

Despite herself, she huffed a laugh. "It was shit, thanks for asking." He chuckled, and Maggie shook her head at him. "We've been bit more than a minute, handsome, we'd better get back out there."

Bucky nodded, but he wasn't done yet. His hand slipped up to cradle the back of her head, and Maggie leaned in to press her lips to his. The kiss was short, but Maggie poured her love and relief into it, and let herself melt into the sure slide of Bucky's lips. Too soon, Bucky pulled away.

"I missed you," Maggie murmured, wishing they could disappear into some bolthole where they could kiss and sleep and hide from the world.

Bucky squeezed her hand, as if he could hear her thoughts. "Me too." As they pulled apart, he took a deep breath. "So, you met Steve."

"I did." Maggie covered her wings with the faux-backpack again, picked up her bag and started walking. Bucky fell into step beside her, and she sensed him struggling to find the words to ask  _do you like my best friend?_ She couldn't help but smile to herself at his silent struggle, before she finally took pity on him.

"He's nice," she said, and smiled again at the way Bucky's shoulders loosened slightly. They walked into the main part of the warehouse and spotted Steve and Sam at the other end, by the van. "He's kinda serious, but that's understandable right now. He didn't seem to need to know anything about me other than that I was going to help him get you to safety. I like him."

Bucky glanced up at his friend, and his face softened and opened, a glimpse of the man he'd been seventy years ago. Maggie knocked her shoulder into his, repressing another smile when he rolled his eyes at her.

"You're jealous of Wilson, though, aren't you?" she stage-whispered.

Bucky sniffed in reply, as if her comment wasn't worthy of a response. They reached the two men by the van, who looked up at their approach.

Steve lifted the burner phone. "Clint's on his way to get Wanda and Scott, and Sharon says she's with us. We'll meet them all at the Leipzig/Halle Airport in thirteen hours."

"Sounds good," Maggie nodded. She was feeling much better after she and Bucky's private moment, and this caught Sam's notice. He straightened and glanced from Maggie to Bucky. They kept their faces neutral.

"So what's your deal?" he eventually asked. "You've been on the lam together this whole time, Bonnie and Clyde style?"

"Sam," Steve muttered, sounding resigned, but even he looked a little curious.

Maggie cocked her head and glanced at Bucky, who was eyeing Sam warily. "Yes," she eventually said. "But without the murdering."

Sam scratched his chin. "Huh. And that was you in Argentina, right, with the kid on the chairlift?"

Maggie blinked.  _They knew about that?_   _Did Tony know?_ "… Yes."

Sam and Steve both contemplated her, and she shifted nervously. They seemed surprised, and she could practically see their estimation of her changing, before her very eyes.

Finally, Sam spoke: "That was a good thing you did. Wait, Barnes was with you then?"

Bucky nodded. "I was stealing a car at the time." Maggie caught the wry edge of a joke in his tone, and the corner of her mouth quirked. He continued: "so we could get away."

"God _damn_ ," Sam said, putting his hands on his hips. He glanced at Steve, who shrugged. He turned back to Maggie and asked "You know we caught you on CCTV?"

Her amusement fell from her face. "No."

"Wasn't much, just a few seconds of you with a backpack. We didn't even know if it was  _you_ , really, no one knows what your face looks like. We talked to the kid, too-"

Maggie brightened. "Miguel. Was he okay?"

Her enthusiasm seemed to take Sam aback, and he shared another glance with Steve. "Yeah, he was… he was fine. He was with his mom, said you were a nice lady."  
Maggie smiled, then wiped away the expression and changed the subject. "We should get moving."

"Good idea," Steve said, meeting her eyes. "Any ideas on getting a vehicle?"

Maggie was surprised he was turning to her for advice – if she'd heard his history right, Captain America had liberated a getaway car on more than one occasion. Then it occurred to her that he could be testing her. All he knew about her, after all, was that she'd tried to kill him a bunch of times and now had Bucky's seal of approval.

Maggie shrugged. "There're plenty of auto repair shops around here, and I hear you're a fair hand at stealing cars."

Steve's eyes widened, and his head snapped toward Bucky. "Buck…?" Hope and surprise mingled in his eyes, and Maggie smirked. But then Sam glanced at her, so she hurriedly composed her face in an innocent expression. He narrowed his eyes.

Bucky's eyes glinted. "I don't know where she coulda' heard that."

Steve smiled, the first time Maggie had seen him do that, and her glee softened at the way the smile transformed his face, made him seem years younger. Bucky smiled too, and Maggie's heart nearly burst at how happy she was for them both.

Sam cleared his throat. "I don't care who steals the car, but we gotta go."

"Right." Steve shook himself, and they followed him out of the warehouse.

 

* * *

 

As they were squeezing into a dusty, midnight blue 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, Sam slammed the passenger door shut then turned to look at Bucky and Maggie.

"Wait, that HYDRA scientist in Chile-"

"Yep," Maggie deadpanned, trying to find a way to fit in the backseat without squashing Bucky. Her wings were making it extra difficult.

"God _damn_ ," Sam muttered, as Steve gunned the engine. "How'd you manage to get him to turn himself in?"

Bucky shifted to give Maggie more room. "We persuaded him," he replied, then cocked his head. "So I'm guessing you don't know about the HYDRA base in Belarus."

Sam thought about it, as Steve steered the puttering car through the dark Berlin streets. "Wait, Belarus? But that was  _ages_ ago, and there wasn't…" he trailed off, glancing at the two stoic ex-assassins in the back seat. "No, you guys did that?"

Maggie nudged Bucky and shot him a  _stop bragging_  look, but she couldn't resist adding: "We don't know anything about it. Communication devices are so  _complicated._ "

"I bet," Steve added, and when she met his eyes in the rear view mirror she could see he was smiling.

 

Twenty minutes outside of Berlin, Bucky glanced away from the window. "Oh, and there were the bank robbers in New Delhi."

" _Bucky_ ," Maggie murmured, though she was smiling.

Sam blinked. "What."

Steve shook his head.

 

* * *

 

When Maggie pulled her beat-up laptop out of her backpack and opened it on her lap, Steve and Sam shared a nervous glance. It was full night out, and they were driving country back roads to avoid detection. Maggie was already sick of sitting in the tiny car, squished in with three men who were far too big for this make and model.

"Isn't that traceable?" Sam eventually asked.

Maggie's fingers danced over the keyboard. "Don't worry about it."

Unbeknownst to her, Steve glanced into the rear-view mirror at Bucky, with a questioning look on his face. Bucky nodded, just once, and Steve returned his focus to the road. If Bucky said it was okay, then Steve was fine with it. And if Steve was fine with it, then Sam would deal with it. With some complaining.

"We need to keep a low profile," Steve murmured, shifting in his seat as he drove. His legs had to be killing him, squashed into the driver's seat as he was. "The CIA and the JTTF and everyone else will be looking for us."

Without looking up from her laptop screen, Maggie said: "I don't know what the Avengers are doing, but the CIA and the JTTF are thinking we've gone west. They're looking for transport lines to the UK and US, and following a few dummy leads I set up."

Sam physically turned around in his seat. "You  _hacked_ the  _CIA_?"

Steve stared incredulously at her in the rear view mirror.

Maggie looked up from her screen for a moment, meeting Sam's gaze. "No, I can read minds from very far away."

Bucky snorted as she returned to her typing. "You're a showoff," he murmured.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie saw Steve smile a dopey smile at Bucky through the rear view mirror.

Maggie merely shrugged, and smirked to herself when Sam turned back around in his seat with a huff.

"We're making jokes now, I guess," he grumbled.

 

* * *

 

After spending a few hours on the back roads, they headed for a 24-7 sports store in a town close to Leipzig that would have what Maggie and Bucky needed for combat gear. It was decided that Maggie and Sam would be the ones to go into the store, as they had the least recognizable faces, and Maggie could speak German.

On the way there, Maggie was working on the laptop when a song she had on her iPod came on the radio.

"Love this song," she muttered absentmindedly, forgetting, for a moment, the tense situation.

Sam's head swivelled, and when she looked up she noticed he was giving her a weird look.

"What, I'm not allowed to like music now?"

He shrugged. "Guess I just don't know how to read you. You're  _really_ different to the last time I met you."

Maggie's face shuttered. Bucky stiffened in his seat and glared at Sam.

For the first time, Maggie properly considered what Sam's opinion of her might be. The last time he'd seen her she'd been the Wyvern, no question about it – black cowl and slitted red goggles covering her face, sharp metal wings flared as she pinned him against the hull of the Helicarrier, seconds from ending his life. She'd been confused, then, but he'd had no way of reading that – to him, she was a barely-human assassin sent to shoot him out of the sky.

Now, Maggie could hardly imagine being that… monster. She was a person now. Her life wasn't normal, but it was filled with music and hobbies and laughter and  _love_. Sam hadn't seen that, she reminded herself. He was seeing an old version of her, surely. Surely she couldn't  _still_ remind him of the Wyvern.

She'd taken too long to answer. Sam said "Uh…?" and glanced at Bucky. Steve looked into the rear view mirror, frowning.

Bucky was still glaring. "Give her a minute," he muttered, and his metal hand dropped to his knee, only an inch away from Maggie's thigh – offering support, but giving her space.

Maggie swallowed, and shook her thoughts away. "That's the goal," she murmured to Sam, gave Bucky a quick smile, then got back to work.

 

* * *

 

Four thousand miles away, Tony went from exasperated to surprised as the fifteen year old he was talking to looked into his eyes with a solemnity that didn't belong on such a young face.

"When you can do the things that I can, but you  _don't,_ and then the bad things happen… they happen because of you."

Tony looked down, and away. The damn kid sounded much too much like another too-young hero he knew. He rallied himself. "So you wanna look out for the little guy, you wanna do your part, make the world a better place. All that, right?"

Peter seemed relieved. "Yeah, yeah, just looking out for the little guy. That's what it is."

Tony sighed, and got to his feet.  _Okay, so we're doing this._

 

* * *

 

At a back road near the sports store, Maggie climbed out of the car after Sam with an audible sigh of relief.

"I feel that," Sam muttered, as she closed the car door, nodded goodbye to Steve and Bucky and turned to follow him. "I couldn't think of a worse car to try to squeeze three super-soldiers into."

Maggie didn't know what to say to that, so they walked the rest of the way to the store in silence. Maggie was still wearing the black slacks and pale blue collared shirt from the van company uniform, though she'd discarded the jacket and hat, and her wings were hidden under the faux-backpack. Sam seemed less suspicious of her after the car ride, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

The store was brightly lit, staffed by a tired-looking teenager. Maggie double-checked her camera signal jammer to make sure it was working. She and Sam moved around the store, searching for clothes tough enough to pass as body armor.

At a rack of reinforced leather vests, Sam scratched his head. "Ah, shit, I didn't ask what size Barnes is, which do you think-"

She reached out silently and slid the right-sized vest off the rack. She'd been buying clothes for Bucky for over two years, and he'd been returning the favor, of course she knew what size he was. Sam shot her a look that she ignored. They moved toward the women's line of outdoor gear, drawing the teenage cashier's eye for a moment.

"So what else have you two been up to in the past two years?" Sam asked in a low voice, cocking his head. "Apart from stopping bank heists and rescuing kids on chairlifts."

Maggie bristled at the light suspicion in his tone, but she kept her face carefully neutral as she selected a pair of tough black trousers designed for rock climbing. "I learned to juggle."

Sam blinked. "Juggling."

"Mhm." She pulled at the pants, testing the durability. They wouldn't stop a bullet, but they were flexible enough for maneuvering while flying, and they might hold up against a blade. "Went to Machu Picchu. I made friends with an old lady named Beatrice. We've both had a few jobs."

Sam pinched his nose. "You're messing with me."

Maggie shrugged. "I'm not, but I understand why you wouldn't believe me."

He shook his head. "I've been looking for you for two and a half years, and I never would've guessed any of that crap." He sounded resigned.

She stilled. "You… you've been looking for  _me_?"

Sam watched her carefully. "Yeah. You and Barnes. That surprising?"

Maggie was flustered now, and she didn't know what to say.  _Tony had looked for her? He'd known all this time?_ "I didn't think… never mind." She hustled to the wall of snacks, trying to escape the conversation. They'd already picked up everything they needed in the way of gear.

But Sam was on the case now. "You left blood on my shirt at the Triskelion-"

"You shot me," she remembered, her face pale.

Sam gave her a look, as if to say  _can you blame me_? She shrugged. "Yeah, and we thought you might be with Barnes so we had the blood tested.  _By Tony_."

She swallowed thickly and stared at the displayed snacks, not really taking them in.

Sam watched Maggie's face. He could see that she remembered Tony, or at least cared about him. He didn't know if he'd ever hoped for that much.

Sam grabbed a handful of protein packets and tossed them in their basket. "I have had a meeting at  _least_ once a month since then, updating Steve and Tony on where I was at with finding you guys. Neither of them have stopped looking."

Maggie swallowed again. "That's over thirty one meetings."

He blinked. "Yes, at least. And it really annoys me that you know that." Maggie reached out and grabbed a packet of peanuts. Sam continued: "He's going to be after us, you know," he said gently. "He might try to stop us."

She was trying to get a hold of herself, and Sam really wasn't helping. "I know."

"What will you do?"

Maggie could feel her skin prickling. She wanted to be out from under these bright lights. She wanted Bucky. "I'll finish the mission," she hissed, and turned away from Sam to march toward the counter. She greeted the tired-looking cashier in German.

Toward the end of their purchase, the cashier lifted the pair of trousers for Bucky and glanced from them to Sam.

" _Ich glaube nicht, dass das die richtige größe für sie ist, sir._ " [" _I don't think these are the right size for you, sir._ "]

Sam blinked at the rapid fire German, and glanced to Maggie for help.

Maggie smiled disarmingly at the cashier. " _Mein mann hat probleme mit seinem gewicht, der arme liebling._ " [" _My husband has problems with his weight, the poor darling._ "]

The cashier glanced back at Sam with a vaguely discomforted look on his face. "Ah." He rushed through the rest of the sale, and after wishing them  _auf wiedersehen_ slumped back onto his counter, eyes glassy with tiredness.

On the way back to the car, Sam frowned. "What was that about?"

Maggie straightened her shoulders, feeling a little better. "Nothing."

 

* * *

 

While Sam and Maggie shopped, Steve and Bucky hunkered down in the tiny car. At first it was awkward – this was the first time they'd been alone together when Bucky wasn't the Soldier.

Bucky's eyes flickered around the car, not sure what to look at. He eventually settled on peering out the window, under the guise of monitoring their surroundings. They were parked on a quiet, poorly lit street in a commercial district. There was no one else around. The night chill seeped in through the windows.

Bucky was surprised when Steve broke the silence. "I'm sorry I didn't look for you, after the train in Switzerland." Bucky was alarmed to hear that Steve's voice was thick and choked. "I should've known-"

"Steve," Bucky interjected, and now  _his_ voice was choked. "It's not your fault."

The idea that Steve'd been carrying around all that guilt for so long… He reached up and rubbed his forehead. Steve was still in the front seat, looking out the windshield.

After a minute, Steve spoke again. "Why did you lie?"

Bucky sighed, trying to meet Steve's eyes in the rear-view mirror, but he was staring resolutely ahead. "Because I knew that whoever was coming was probably going to kill me. I didn't want you coming after me trying to protect me, in case you got caught in the firing line." He laughed humorlessly and glanced down at his lap. "Look how that worked out."

Steve bowed his head. "That's why you've been away all this time?"

"I'm dangerous, Steve. I knew someone would try to use me against you, and that's exactly what ended up happening."

Steve let out a long breath, and it fogged the windshield. "I could have helped you."

"I know." He knew it wasn't worth trying to convince Steve that he'd been better off without Bucky. Steve had always been more stubborn than him.

Bucky thought they were going to leave it at that, but apparently he'd forgotten just how persistent his friend could be. Steve turned in his seat, the far-off streetlight casting shadows across his face. "I missed you, Buck."

That surprised Bucky, and he felt his throat tighten with emotion. He wanted to keep Steve safe, knew that he had to distance himself for that to happen, but he couldn't help it: "I missed you too, punk."

Steve's smile was sudden and brilliant, and his blue eyes glinted in the darkness. "Jerk."

They settled into a comfortable silence after that. Bucky watched the weak light glimmer on his metal arm, contemplating all the gleaming memories of Steve he'd recalled over the years, and how they didn't hold up against the real thing. Steve watched his friend, a small smile on his face.

After a minute or so, Steve crossed his arms and leaned against the door. "And what about her?"

Bucky stiffened slightly. "What about her?"

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You know who she is, don't you?  _She_ knows who she is."

Bucky examined his metal fingers. Softly, he replied: "Yeah."

"Her brother's been looking for her-"

He glanced up. "He has?"

Steve frowned. "Yeah, he has. He's known she's alive for a while now."

Bucky found himself nodding. He was glad for Meg, he really was, but he knew how complicated this must make things for her. He remembered asking her if she wanted to see her brother.  _You know why I can't do that_ , she'd said.

_Doesn't stop you wanting things._

After a long moment, she'd sighed.  _Yeah. I do want that._

Bucky could almost hear Steve's thoughts churning, so he offered: "She's just as dangerous as I am, Steve. And she wanted to protect him."

Steve sighed, and dropped his head back against the window. "Tony's not gonna stop."

Bucky went cold at the implications of that. For the first time, he wasn't thinking of Tony as one of his victims, a man who missed his sister from afar. He knew the man's history – Tony Stark was a determined, resourceful genius, and if he was anything like his sister, then sooner or later Stark would get what he was looking for.

Bucky didn't know what would happen if he caught up to Meg, especially while they were looking for the Winter Soldiers.

Eventually, Steve cleared his throat. Bucky glanced up and saw that he seemed to be struggling to find the words to say something. He waited.

Eventually: "Is she… alright?"

Bucky blinked. "What?"

"We… we went to a base in Canada," Steve murmured. "Saw some… pretty terrible things."

Bucky swallowed, thinking of all the times he'd heard Meg screaming in her sleep. His jaw tightened.

"Once you remember that stuff… you don't forget it again."

Steve's eyes darkened, but then he spotted something just down the street and straightened. Bucky looked over his shoulder – it was Meg and Sam, walking back to the car with bags in their arms. Meg's face was carefully neutral, but Bucky could see from the line of her shoulders and the look in her eyes that something was troubling her.

 

Steve eyed Bucky in the rear view mirror as Maggie climbed into the back seat and offered him a bag of peanuts. Bucky smiled, and Steve was taken aback at how much it made him look like the man he'd been seventy years ago, fun-loving and sociable, trading jokes and smiles with his friends.

Steve thought that over as he and Sam swapped seats, and Sam drove the car away. If Maggie Stark could make Bucky smile with just a bag of peanuts, then she was alright in his book.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's only like two hours from Berlin to Leipzig/Halle, but I figure they've got to wait for Clint to grab the others and fly to Germany, so they're just kinda lying low in this chapter.
> 
> Also, I know Sam seems a bit mean in this chapter, but let me just add a disclaimer: Sam Wilson is one of my favorite Avengers! He can fly, he's crazy loyal, he's got emotional intelligence and maturity, and he's also gorgeous. I'm really not trying to cast him as a bad guy here, he just wants to make sure Steve isn't getting in over his head (which he is, but Sam does his best), and he wants to make sure Maggie knows what she's doing. Also, he's like the most normal Avenger so every now and then he just needs to take a second to be like "Ok, this is crazy, just want to double check y'all know that. Anyway, continue."
> 
> Thanos will pay for what he has done.
> 
> Let me know what you think, lovelies!


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you guys are amazing and it's a pleasure to hear what you think :)

 

June 24th, 2016  
Outskirts of Leipzig, Germany

Maggie and Bucky slept as they had as the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier – sitting bolt upright, one watching over the other. Sam and Steve had swapped driving so Steve could get some shuteye, but from what Maggie could tell he just stared pensively out the window. He clearly wasn't any good at sitting and waiting.

They were an hour out from their prearranged meetup with Sharon (who turned out to be Sharon Carter, Peggy Carter's great-niece), Steve was driving again, and Maggie was working on the computer.

As she trawled through flight records from the US to Germany, she tugged at the collar of her shirt. She was fed up with this car – it was tiny, poorly air conditioned, and packed with four wrung-out, tired people who hadn't had a moment alone in a while. She loved Bucky, but if he didn't stop shifting his legs in an attempt to find more room, she was going to scream.

Maggie squinted at the data on her screen and grimaced. "I've found some trace evidence of your friends' flight details to Germany," she told Steve and Sam. "And it looks like someone's been keeping an eye on Carter. If I can find it, then I'm sure that To- that others can find it."

Steve let out a long sigh. "I guess it can't be helped. We'll have to prepare for contact."

A grim silence fell in the small car. Maggie closed her laptop and shared a glance with Bucky. She could see the question in his eyes:  _are you going to be okay if your brother comes for us?_

She didn't know. It didn't feel real yet, that she'd seen her brother, that she'd felt his beating pulse under her fingers. The thought of seeing him again so soon, when he was awake, was… terrifying.

Maggie swallowed. Bucky's metal fingers crept across the small space between them to tangle with her own fingers. His eyes were creased with concern, and she smiled reassuringly at him. They had a mission, and she'd complete it.

If Tony tried to stop them… she didn't have an answer for that. But it didn't seem like it was just her and Bucky against the world this time. Steve and Sam seemed just as determined to get to the doctor and the Winter Soldiers as they were, and they'd called in more help. Maggie had more or less figured out who was on the way – Lang, the "Ant-Man"; Clint – probably Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye; and Wanda, no doubt Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. Maggie had never really been on a team before, let alone with people with extraordinary powers, but she found she didn't mind the idea of it – the more people who could help to track down that doctor and bring him justice for what he'd done to the world and to Bucky, the better.

Tony would either agree to help them, or he would try to stop them. Maggie didn't think that anyone in this car wanted to hurt Tony, so they would just have to get around him. She let out a long breath, and squeezed Bucky's metal fingers. There were only two logical options. She could live with that.

Bucky seemed to sense her mind ease, and he knocked his knee against hers with a smile. She smiled back, but then he was  _moving his_   _goddamn legs around again_ , so she had to clench her jaw and look out the window before she smacked him.

 

Sam had seen their fingers tangle out of the corner of his eye, and his eyebrows shot up his forehead as the pieces clicked together in his mind: the glances loaded with meaning, the small touches, the way they'd come back from their secret chat smiling and joking, and the way they seemed to exist in each other's orbit, intimate and trusting.

 _That's going to make things complicated_ , he thought. But he'd found a kind-of-truce with the ex assassins, and they all had a job to do, so he kept his mouth shut.

 

* * *

 

Underpass near Leipzig/Halle Airport, Germany

Steve pulled up behind Sharon Carter's nondescript grey Audi, and climbed out of the driver's seat. Maggie wasn't paying attention to him, though – her eyes were on the woman who'd just emerged from the car ahead of them.

She was younger than Maggie had expected, and pretty, with blonde hair and brown eyes. And… Maggie swore under her breath when she realised that she'd seen this woman only yesterday, groaning in the ruins of a cafeteria table. She glanced sideways at Bucky, and saw the glimmer of guilt in his expression. So he was remembering, then.

Maggie knocked her knee into his, and once she had his attention raised her eyebrows at him, as if to say  _see, she's okay!_

Bucky smiled sadly at her, then went back to looking through the windshield.

Outside the car and out of earshot, Sharon Carter greeted Steve with: "I'm not sure you understand the concept of a getaway car."

"It's low profile," Steve replied, and they met by the trunk of her car.

"Good, because this stuff tends to draw a crowd." Sharon opened the trunk to reveal Steve's shield and uniform, and what must have been Sam's wing pack.

Inside the Beetle, Maggie's eyes widened and she sat up to get a closer look – she'd been curious about Sam's wings since she'd seen them in action on the causeway all those years ago, and now it seemed she might have a moment to inspect them. And the Vibranium shield – she wanted to know what the rarest metal on earth felt like, when it wasn't putting dents in her wings.

But she was distracted when Bucky spoke: "Can you move your seat up?"

Sam didn't even turn around. "No."

Maggie rolled her eyes. It seemed she wasn't the only one fed up with sharing this tiny goddamned space. And she was trying to pretend she didn't notice Sam and Bucky basically fighting over being Steve's friend, because that would be beneath them and she wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. She really did. Sighing, she pressed herself closer against the side of the car and moved her legs to give Bucky more room.

Outside the car, Steve murmured "I owe you again."

"Keepin' a list." Sharon turned to look into the Beetle just as Bucky shifted closer to the middle, slinging his metal arm behind Maggie's backrest so they could share more space. All three occupants of the car were looking out at Sharon and Steve.

"You know he kinda tried to kill me," Sharon sighed, leveling her gaze on Steve.

"Sorry. I'll put it on the list."

She smiled. "And you've made a friend," she added, casting another glance at the dark-haired woman in the back seat. Sensing she was being talked about, Maggie wiggled her fingers in a wave. That was something that people did with acquaintances, wasn't it?

Steve raised an eyebrow and turned back to Sharon. "His friend. I think."

Sharon smiled again, her eyes going warm, then glanced back down at the trunk of her car, biting her lip.

Back in the Beetle, Maggie's eyes darted between the two blondes. The eye contact, the way Steve's head was angled toward Carter, the almost nervous glances…

" _Bucky_ ," she whispered, straightening.

"I see it," Bucky murmured back. He sounded surprised, but there was a smile in his voice.

Sam looked over his shoulder. "What?"

They both ignored him.

Moments later, Steve stepped toward Sharon and leaned in, taking her in his arms as he kissed her. Maggie gasped and flung her hand toward Bucky, smacking his chest in her excitement.

After a short embrace, Steve and Sharon pulled apart, smiling.

"That was…"

"Late," Steve admitted, his hands on her waist and a smile on his lips.

"Damn right," she grinned. They pulled apart – Steve wished they could have more time, but it seemed he was always destined to go off and do something stupid.

"I should go," Sharon said. She met his eyes once more, gave him a small smile, then stepped around him to get back in her car.

Smiling to himself, Steve nodded and found himself glancing back at the Beetle.

In the passenger seat Sam nodded and smiled, his eyes glinting with vindication after all the times he'd teased Steve about  _the nurse._ Behind him, Bucky's tense face broke into a smile, teasing and proud and just so  _Bucky_ that Steve felt like he was a kid in Brooklyn again. To Bucky's left, Steve found himself faced with a wicked smirk that he'd seen time and time again throughout his life – first on Howard's face, then Tony's, and now, apparently, on Maggie's.

Steve sighed and gave them a pointed look. They could at least  _pretend_ they weren't blatantly staring.

 

* * *

 

Leipzig/Halle Airport

As Steve steered the puttering car into the airport carpark, Maggie met Bucky's eyes. Her gut was churning with nerves, and if Bucky's faintly whirring arm and troubled eyes were any indication, he wasn't exactly the picture of calm either.

Whatever was about to happen, it felt like everything they'd been running from for two years was about to come crashing down on them.

Maggie swallowed.

Steve parked a few spaces down from a nondescript white van, cut off the engine, and climbed out of the car. Maggie peered out the window and assessed the situation.

The driver of the van, a blonde man wearing black trousers and a leather vest, got out and nodded to Steve. "Cap." Maggie ran her eyes over the man's face and identified him as Clint Barton.

The passenger of the van, a grim-faced young woman with long brown hair, climbed out as Steve and Barton approached one another.

"You know I wouldn't have called if I had any other choice," Steve said, shaking Barton's hand. Maggie ran her eyes over the archer. Even if she hadn't known his name and alias, she'd have noticed that this was a highly skilled man. His eyes were alert, his body battle-ready. A prickle of nerves went through her as she realised that this was another person who knew her brother.

"Hey, man, you're doing me a favour," Barton said, and Maggie pushed the Beetle's driver's seat forward so she could get out. Bucky was climbing out the passenger door. "Besides," Barton continued, flicking his head at Maximoff, "I owe a debt."

Steve spoke to Maximoff, then, something about having his back, but Maggie wasn't paying attention. Barton had looked up to acknowledge Sam, now standing by Steve's side, and then his eyes flicked toward the two ex-HYDRA assassins climbing out of the tiny Beetle.

Maggie felt his gaze prickling on her skin as she stepped onto the concrete and shut the car door behind her. She moved towards the bonnet and leaned against it, hanging back from the conversation, but finally she could ignore the archer's gaze no longer. Crossing her arms, she looked up and met his keen, assessing eyes.

She knew they called him Hawkeye, and she had to admit the name was well-given. As he peered at her blank face, Maggie felt as if he was seeing every secret she'd ever kept. And for the life of her, she couldn't work out what he was thinking. She wondered how much he knew about her past, about who she was.

Barton's eyes flickered to Bucky, who was keeping the car between himself and the newcomers, trying to draw as little attention as possible, and a furrow grew between his brows. All of this passed in the space of seconds.

"How 'bout our other recruit?" Steve asked, drawing Barton's attention away. The archer didn't seem to need to acknowledge the Bucky-and-Maggie sized elephant in the room, so he swung around and paced toward the van door.

"He's raring to go!" he said, and pulled the van door open with a metallic  _slam_. "Had to put a little coffee in him, but-"

The last occupant of the van, a dark-haired man who had been sleeping with his feet up on the seat, jerked awake, blinking. Maggie smiled.

"He should be good!" Barton finished.

Steve glanced at Sam questioningly, and Sam shrugged. No one was paying attention to Maggie, so she took the opportunity to look over her shoulder and raise an eyebrow at Bucky, questioning:  _are you alright_?

He nodded, one arm propped on the car roof, and gave her a half-hearted smile. He looked tired.

"What time zone is this?" she heard the newly-awoken man –  _Scott Lang_ – ask, as he climbed out of the van. She turned to see him glancing around at the people in the parking lot, bewildered and getting rapidly more excited.

"C'mon," Barton muttered, and pushed Lang toward Steve.

"Captain America!" Lang exclaimed, eyes locked on Steve and his face all lit up like a kid at Christmas. He grasped Steve's outstretched hand and started enthusiastically shaking it.

"Mr. Lang."

"It's an honour," Lang said, nearly shaking Steve's entire body now. "I'm shaking your hand too long!" Steve nodded and was released. "Wow! This is awesome!"

Maggie raised an eyebrow.

"Captain America!" Lang exclaimed once more, to Maximoff, then did a double take. "I know you too, you're great!" Then, as if he couldn't decide what to latch onto next, he seized Steve's – admittedly impressive – shoulders, and grimaced. " _Jeez._ "

Steve looked over his shoulder at Bucky at that, trading a bemused glance with his best friend. Maggie had to work hard to repress her laughter.

"Look," Lang continued, and Maggie's eyebrows continued to rise up her forehead. "I wanna say, I know you know a lot of super people, so – thinks for thanking of me!"

Lang was a ball of nerves and enthusiastic energy, his thoughts tripping straight off his tongue in a nervous stream-of consciousness. Maggie liked him.

Lang grinned at Sam. "Hey, man!"

"What's up, Tic-Tac?"

"Uh, good to see you. Look, what happened last time-"

"It was a great audition," Sam cut in, "but it'll…" he chuckled, shaking his head. "It'll never happen again."

Before she could stop herself, Maggie snorted. "Did he kick your ass?" she asked, still leaning against the car bonnet.

Sam tensed, but Steve moved on before she could get a satisfactory answer. She raised an eyebrow at Bucky, who gave her a small smirk. When she turned back, she realised that she'd drawn Barton and Maximoff's attention, and they were both eyeing her curiously. She stiffened again.

"They tell you what we're up against?" Steve was asking.

Lang sobered. "Something about some… psycho assassins?"

Bucky and Maggie tensed imperceptibly.

"We're outside the law on this one," Steve explained. "So if you come with us, you're a wanted man."

"Yeah, well, what else is new." Lang's face was uncharacteristically somber.

"We should get moving," Bucky called.

Barton stepped forward. "I've got a chopper lined up."

As if on cue, a blaring alarm sounded throughout the airport, followed by an evacuation instruction in German. Maggie's stomach erupted with nerves again, and she shared a glance with Bucky.

"They're evacuating the airport," he explained to the others. Maggie concentrated on her breathing. She wished they could just get to the doctor in Siberia and deal with him, instead of having to face… whatever was about to happen.

Sam turned to Steve and muttered: "Stark."

"Stark?" Lang echoed.

Maggie's muscles went rigid, locking her in place, and a ringing sound filled her head. But despite her instinctive bodily reaction to the name, she didn't miss the looks that everyone but Lang shot her. She scowled and hunched her shoulders. How many goddamn people knew who she was?

Steve straightened and glanced around at his motley crew of soldiers. "Suit up," he commanded, and everyone sprang into action.

Maggie pushed off the bonnet and reached into the car to grab her gear bag, but when she turned around she came face to face with Steve, his face creased with concern and his shoulders set. She blinked.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked softly.

"… Sure."

Steve turned and walked a little ways down the parking lot. Maggie followed, glancing over her shoulder at Bucky. Bucky had hesitated by the car and watched her following Steve with a furrowed brow. There was a question in his eyes:  _do you want me to come_? She shook her head at him, shooting him a quick smile, and he went to suit up.

Maggie almost bumped into Steve when he stopped abruptly and turned around, his face still troubled. She could see him struggling for words so she waited silently, clutching her gear bag with both hands.

Finally, he met her eyes and said: "Tony's going to be here."

Maggie's look of polite curiosity fell from her face, and she felt as if he'd punched her in the chest. She  _knew_ that, she was trying not to think too hard about it, so why was he-

"You understand that?" Steve asked, eyes flicking over her face.

She straightened. "Yes."

His eyes were still troubled. "You don't have to fight him, if you don't want. You can walk away right now and no one will think less of you for it."

For a second, Maggie considered it. She wouldn't have to face Tony, she could slip back into comfortable anonymity. But as soon as it came, any serious consideration of the idea vanished – she couldn't leave Bucky to face the consequences of the past few days on his own, and she knew that Steve and the others needed her help against the Winter Soldiers.

Steve let her process his offer for a few moments, then continued. "But. If you want to stay, if you want to see this through – we could use all the help we can get."

Maggie sighed and looked into Steve's eyes. He looked disturbed, and she realized how hard this must be for him – sending his friend's sister up against his friend in battle. She could see from the turmoil in his eyes that he cared about Tony.

Maggie's face softened, and the churning fear and nerves in her gut lessened slightly. She took a deep breath, and murmured: "I'm not walking away from this one."

They looked into each other's eyes for a few seconds more, then Steve nodded, a frown still hovering on his brow. "Then you'd better get suited up."

"Yes, Captain."

"Call me Steve."

Maggie blinked and raised an eyebrow, and was surprised to see compassion in Steve's face. He didn't like this at all, that much was plain to see, but she could tell that he respected her. Maggie didn't think anyone but Bucky had truly respected her since her break with HYDRA, and the inclusion of Steve on that small list made her throat clog up with emotion.

But they didn't have time for that. She nodded to Steve once more, then ducked away to pull on her battle gear.

 

* * *

 

A minute later – she had always been a fast changer, thanks to HYDRA – Maggie stepped out from behind what meager cover she could find, holding her barbed gloves, red goggles, and cowl. She paced in the general direction of the two vehicles, frowning at the items in her hands, remnants of her life as the Wyvern. She'd barely looked at them in almost a year now, and they felt alien in her fingers. The gloves gleamed dully under the fluorescent lights, and the red tint of the goggle lenses glinted. The smooth slide of the cowl over her skin sent a shudder racing down Maggie's spine.

She'd taken the backpack cover off, so now her wings were out for anyone in the airport carpark to see, folded close to her body but still unmistakably lethal metal weapons. She noticed that her gait was different, now that she was wearing the wings and sturdy black battle gear. Her booted feet were light but sure, walking with purpose. Her arms hung loosely by her sides, ready for combat at a moment's notice.

Like a magnetic pull, she sensed Bucky appear before her. She glanced up and spotted him waiting for her by a concrete post, decked out in black gear with his silver arm bared. His blue-grey eyes were dark and troubled as he took her in.

For a few moments, silence stretched between them as they eyed each other in their uniforms. This was different to when they'd gone up against Vincent Silva – those had been costumes, intended to intimidate. Now, they were dressed for battle.

Bucky looked dangerous, clad in black with his arm's scarlet star on display. Maggie could only imagine she looked the same.

Maggie sighed, then realised she couldn't make this more tragic than it already was. "Right size?" she asked, gesturing to Bucky's vest as she resumed pacing toward him.

He nodded, frowning a little, and she shrugged.

"Sam was worried."

"I'm sure he was," Bucky replied, the corner of his mouth tugging up a little. Once they were a few feet apart, he nodded at the items Maggie carried. "You gonna use those?"

Maggie lifted her hands and considered the items, tokens of a past life that had rested at the bottom of her bag for so long, unused. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the black cowl with two fingers and dropped it on the ground. It pooled on the concrete, and she let out a breath of relief.

The cowl had been part of what made the Wyvern a faceless assassin, removed from humanity. It had separated her from her victims, given them nothing but darkness to look into before they met their violent end.

Maggie didn't want to cover her face any more.

Bucky watched her with warmth in his eyes. She put her goggles on slowly, resting them on her forehead for now, then pulled on her gauntlets. The feel of them made her shiver, as if she was pulling a part of her personhood away.

But Bucky was there, and once she was done they stepped together, pulling each other into their arms. Bucky smelled like leather and metal, but under that was the scent of  _him_ , warm and familiar. Maggie was careful to lay her palms flat on his back, to avoid snagging the sharp fingers of her gauntlets on his battle vest, and held him tight enough to feel his heartbeat.

Bucky sighed, his hair brushing her cheek. "You gonna be alright, doll?"

He was asking so many complicated things:  _are you ready to be the Wyvern again?_ and  _are you ready to fight HYDRA's ghosts?_ and  _are you ready to face your brother for the first time since 1991 on a battlefield?_

Maggie tucked her head a little closer to Bucky's, closing her eyes at his warmth. "I have to be. How about you, handsome?"

He huffed a sad laugh, and his arm let out a faint whir. "Likewise."

"I love you."

Bucky's hand brushed the back of her neck, soothing. "I love you, too." After a beat, he sighed. "Meg, you don't have to fight him. I know you don't… it doesn't have to be like this."

"Huh, that's what Steve said," she murmured, and she felt Bucky's surprise. "But you need me. Steve and the others need me. I'm… I'm terrified, but I need to do this."

Bucky sighed again. "I'm sorry."

Maggie opened her mouth, not entirely sure what she was going to say, when they heard footsteps approaching and stepped apart.

It was Sam, adjusting his wingpack as he strode towards them in the fluorescently-lit carpark. He'd seen their embrace, and he raised an eyebrow.

Maggie rolled her eyes at Sam, then turned back to Bucky and cocked her head.

"For the mission?"

He nodded once, a faint smile playing at his lips. "For the mission."

God, she wanted to kiss him.

After a moment of consideration, Maggie reflected that there was no reason  _not_ to kiss him, so she stepped back into Bucky's space, smoothed her hand up the side of his neck and pressed her lips to his. After a moment of surprised stillness he kissed her back, his fingers curling around her waist and his body leaning unconsciously towards hers. Maggie smiled into the kiss, and her skin lit up where Bucky touched her.

The kiss only lasted a few seconds, but when she pulled away Maggie felt some of her nerves and exhaustion fading away. Bucky's eyes were warm, and the tension had slipped out of his face. He looked a little quizzical, but she merely smiled at him.

Maggie suspected there wasn't much that Sam Wilson didn't notice, as he was far more perceptive than he let on. And though she and Bucky had been restrained, careful, around Sam and Steve, they hadn't been able to hide the way they worried for one another, cared about one another. She supposed there wasn't much of a reason to hide their relationship, beyond habit. If she and Bucky wanted to kiss each other, she didn't see why they shouldn't be able to. What was Sam going to do, split them up at recess?

Sam passed by, shooting them a wary glance. "So weird," he muttered, but his tone was light.

Maggie bumped her shoulder against Bucky's, winked, and then they fell into step behind Sam on the way back to the van.

Darker thoughts began to slip back into Maggie's mind, and she found she was trying so hard to keep her mind off her brother that it took her a few seconds to realize that she was staring directly at Sam's wingpack. Now that was an  _excellent_ distraction.

Half a minute later, Sam glanced over his shoulder and flinched at the sight of Maggie barely half a foot behind him, awkwardly hunched as she tried to inspect his engine exhaust outputs.

"Jesus!" he yelped, skipping a few feet ahead. Maggie blinked at him, and Bucky smirked. "What're you-"

"The US Army made those?" she asked, nodding at his wings.

Sam walked sideways so he could keep an eye on her. "Originally. They've had updates since then. Why?"

Maggie could guess who had been making updates. She shrugged. "Just curious. They're remarkably collapsible. And you use your arms to steer them?"

"Look," Sam said defensively, "I've got wings, you've got wings, let's just deal with it, alright?"

"But I want to know-"

"Meg," Bucky interrupted, concealing a smile, and she sighed.

_Maybe later._

They reached the parked vehicles, and Bucky and Sam veered off toward where Barton and Steve were planning. Maggie took one look at their heavy brows and headed towards the other two by the van. She knew she'd have to fight, but she wanted to avoid thinking about it for as long as she could.

She spared a glance for the parked Beetle – she'd left her backpack, with all her tools and treasures, in the trunk. Her heart ached.

Lang and Maximoff were pulling on the last parts of their uniforms – Lang was putting his arm through the sleeve of what looked like a red and black motorcycle suit, and Maximoff was pulling on her boots.

"Oh man," Lang was saying, and Maggie wondered if he'd stopped talking since he'd gotten out of the van. "Hank is going to be so mad at me-"

"Who's Hank?" asked Maximoff, as she dusted off her red leather uniform. "You've mentioned him a lot."

"Hank Pym, he's-"

Maggie perked up at the name, and stepped out from where she was concealed by the van. "Doctor Hank Pym?"

Lang flinched at her sudden appearance, cursing, but Maximoff didn't look surprised – perhaps her powers allowed her to sense Maggie before she was visible.

"The physicist?" she continued, cocking her head at Lang.

He blinked at her. "Uh, yeah. You know him?"

She shrugged. "I've read some of his work, he's a remarkable scientist. He made that suit?"

"Yeah."

"Huh." Her estimation of 'Ant-Man' hiked up a few notches. She was interested to see what the suit could do. She knew Hank Pym worked with her father and her aunt Peggy at S.H.I.E.L.D., back in the day. "So Pym Particles aren't just theoretical, then?"

Lang's eyes narrowed. She could see his confusion about her presence, and his darting glances at her wings, just visible over her shoulders. "Uh, so I don't think we were introduced, who did you say you were again?"

"Maggie." She offered her gauntleted hand, and he shook it. He had buttons on his gloves.

"Scott." He cocked his head, obviously still trying to figure out if he recognised her. "Are you wearing wings?"

"I sure am."

Maggie turned to Maximoff, who had been peering at her curiously, and offered her hand.

The Avenger took it. "I'm Wanda." Her Sokovian accent was still strong, but Maggie could hear the soft American twang to her voice, no doubt absorbed from her team members. Mentally, she corrected herself:  _ex_ -team members.

Wanda herself seemed to be sizing Maggie up, taking in her uniform and wings with something like a haunted look in her eyes.

"It's nice to meet you," Maggie said, and Wanda glanced up at her face.

"It's nice to meet you too," Wanda replied, and Maggie was surprised to hear that she seemed to actually mean it.

Scott got into his suit properly, and tucked a strange-looking helmet under his arm. "So you're a scientist, then?" he asked.

Maggie smiled. She liked Scott Lang, with his easy enthusiasm. "Not technically. I'm an international fugitive."

"Oh, sweet. I was in prison for burglary, but that was more of a state sentence."

Bucky came over, running a wary eye over the two relative strangers Maggie was chatting to. Maggie smiled at him, then turned to the others.

"Bucky, this is Scott Lang and Wanda Maximoff. Scott and Wanda, this is Bucky."

Wanda's eyes darted between Maggie and Bucky, and Maggie thought she saw her eyes glow red for a moment, but she was distracted by Scott's sudden exclamation of:

"Bucky  _Barnes_?" His eyes were round. "Oh man, I used to watch that Captain America cartoon all the time, and I had a bunch of comics!"

Wanda rolled her eyes.

Maggie gauged Bucky's mood to see how he would react to  _that_ , but he just seemed bemused.

"Uh, well… that's me, I guess." He shrugged.

"Jeez, it is such an honor to meet you, and I gotta say I'm really sorry about the whole framing thing, that shit's rough. My girlfriend framed me for a burglary – well I mean, I technically  _did_ the burglary, but she was supposed to keep it secret, it was like a test, y'know?"

"No," said Bucky.

Wanda, bless her, interrupted. "It's nice to meet you both," she said, and there was a warmth in her eyes that Maggie liked. "I've heard a lot about you."

 _Oh._  That explained the weird looks, then.

"Any good things?" Maggie asked half-heartedly.

Wanda opened her mouth, then closed it. Bucky tensed up.

Maggie sighed. "Well, we can only improve on that reputation. Would you care for a joke?"

That eased Bucky's tension, but before she could go on – she was  _definitely_ going to tell them the elephant joke – Steve and Barton walked over, grim-faced in their uniforms.

"I'll tell you later," Maggie whispered to Scott and Wanda, and they both blinked bemusedly at her.

"Alright," Steve said, and Maggie did a double take at the sight of him in full Captain-America uniform, stars and stripes and winged helmet. But after spending some time with Steve out of the uniform, Maggie realised it wasn't the suit that gave him that aura of purpose and solemnity. Steve had had it long before he put the suit on. Probably long before Captain America was even conceived of.

Steve continued: "We've got a plan to get airborne. First, everyone needs these commpieces."

Barton, wearing a dark sleeveless uniform, handed out the comms. He also handed Maggie something that looked a little like a chunky black bracelet. When she raised an eyebrow, he shrugged. "Energy blaster," he explained. "It'll power up once it's on your wrist, and it'll give you ranged defense. Here's how you fire it." As Barton gave her a crash course on the weapon, Maggie scrutinized his face out of the corner of her eye. Why he had seen fit to arm  _her_ , she didn't know, but she couldn't read any malicious intent in it. So she slipped on the blaster, feeling it fit snugly to her wrist, and nodded her thanks.

He offered a quick smile in response to her obviously confused expression. "It's an alternative to guns. Non-lethal." The explanation was non-specific, but Maggie was abruptly reminded that she was about to go up against her brother and his friends in battle, and her stomach flipped.

As Barton returned to his place, Steve ran an eye over his newly assembled team. They stood in a rough circle, adjusting suit straps and accepting the earpieces with serious faces. He felt a twist of guilt and sadness go through him at the sight of Maggie and Bucky in their uniforms. Their faces were visible this time around, but he couldn't help but think of them as the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier, all black outfits and metal limbs, with no choice in the matter. He wished he didn't have to do this, but they needed everyone they could get, and it was clear that Bucky and Maggie were going to see this through to the end.

Steve realised that Maggie was inspecting him right back, running an eye over his colourful uniform and the shield dangling loosely in his hand. She leaned toward Bucky and whispered something, which Steve just caught with his enhanced hearing:

" _Living embodiment of freedom_."

Bucky snorted, and Steve felt his churning guilt ease a little. This was almost normal, managing a team who traded jokes and sarcastic comments, making fun of their leader's uniform. All the same, he couldn't stop himself comparing Maggie's wry smile and glittering dark eyes to Tony, and his heart ached.

Everyone sobered up when they got into planning mode. Steve and Barton outlined their slapdash idea, while the others chipped in with questions and ways to hone the strategy. Scott came in useful, detailing what his suit could do and how it could help them. Bucky and Maggie's contributions revealed just how much tactical thinking had been drilled into them – they identified vantage positions, choke points and likely firepower in a heartbeat.

Maggie was relying on her skills and experience, but she couldn't shake off the knowledge of what she was about to walk into. Finally, she gathered her courage and asked: "Who are we going to be up against?" She cursed the slight waver in her voice, but didn't shy away from Steve's gaze when he looked up. She needed to know.

Barton cleared his throat. "Nat, Vision and Rhodey, for sure." Maggie felt her gut twist in an odd way at the prospect of fighting Rhodey, who'd once promised to take her flying. "If they're desperate, I think they'd ask King T'Challa to fight as well."

Maggie's eyes flicked to Bucky. The Wakandan thought Bucky had killed his father, and she knew better than most how that desire for revenge could fuel a person. She resolved to keep more of an eye out for Bucky than she normally would.

"And," Steve continued. "Tony. And whoever else they might decide to bring. We've got to be ready to improvise."

Maggie gritted her teeth, and reminded herself that no one here wanted to hurt Tony. They would just have to get around him. She could do that. It was just a tactical manoeuvre.

Bucky's fingers brushed hers, just for a moment, but the relief it gave her was an almost dizzying headrush.

"Okay," Steve said, straightening and fastening his remarkable shield to his forearm. When this was all said and done, Maggie wanted to get a good look at it. "Everyone know their positions?"

There was a round of silent nods.

Steve glanced around at them all. "Then let's move out."


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go!

 

Maggie was perched on the roof of Leipzig/Halle's air traffic control tower like some kind of gargoyle, watching from afar as Steve paced out onto the tarmac in full uniform, and broke into a run toward Barton's helicopter. The part of Maggie that was still the Wyvern thought:  _clear skies, open terrain; optimal for airborne attack._ She narrowed her eyes behind her goggles and focused. Her clawed gauntlets and heel spurs dug into the roof to keep herself anchored.

Everyone was in position: Scott standing by, so small that he was hidden from sight, Bucky and Sam in the terminal scanning for the Quinjet that was surely somewhere, and Wanda and Clint in the parking lot.

Sure enough, Steve barely made it halfway before Iron Man, red and gold and gleaming, swooped down and tossed an EMP onto the helicopter. It shorted out with a crackle of electricity.

Iron Man and War Machine dove out of the sky to land in front of Steve, and Maggie's heart leapt into her mouth. She'd seen her brother only yesterday, but it was one thing to see Tony unconscious and bleeding on the floor, and it was another to see him like this – a red and gold beacon, staring down his friend.

"Wow, it's so weird how you run into people at the airport," came Tony's voice, and his helmet retracted to reveal his face. He turned to Rhodey. "Don't you think that's weird?"

"Definitely weird."

Maggie didn't know if she'd ever felt like this before. Her heart was pounding against her ribcage, her palms were sweating, and she felt strangely floaty, as if she wasn't really in her body. She was hundreds of feet away, but she could hear Tony and Rhodey's voices through Steve's commlink and it took her back to a kitchen in Manhattan, sipping orange juice with her brother and his best friend. Almost unconsciously, Maggie used her goggles to zoom in on Tony's exposed face. He was blooming with ugly bruises, and she winced, but now that he was awake he looked so  _alive_ : colorful and witty and determined.

"Hear me out, Tony," said Steve. Maggie jumped guiltily, and went back to surveying the situation. She couldn't allow herself to get absorbed in her brother, not right now. It was difficult to wrench her eyes away, though.

"That doctor," Steve continued, "the psychiatrist. He's behind all of this."

With barely a sound, the Black Panther leaped from behind a loading ramp, landing feet away from Steve. Maggie raised an eyebrow at the suit – she hadn't had a good look at it before, but she could see this was a well-made uniform, sinuous and lethal.

"Captain."

Steve inclined his head. "Your highness."

"Anyway," Tony said, pacing behind Rhodey. "Ross gave me 36 hours to bring you in. That was 24 hours ago. Can you help a brother out?"

"You're after the wrong guy," Steve replied.

"Your judgment is askew," Tony shot back. "Your old war buddy killed innocent people yesterday-"

Maggie flinched, and noticed her hands were shaking.

"And there are five more super soldiers just like him," Steve cut in. There was a pause. "I can't let the doctor find them first, Tony, I just can't."

"Steve." That was a softer voice, and… oh. Maggie blinked at the sudden appearance of the Black Widow – she hadn't noticed her approaching, she clearly needed to focus. "You  _know_ what's about to happen. Do you really want to punch your way out of this one?"

Steve clenched his jaw and turned back to Tony. Maggie spotted a flash of red out of the corner of her eye.

"Steve," she murmured into the comm, "there's a-"

But she was too late. Tony sighed and said. "Alright, I've run out of patience. Underoos!"

The flash of scarlet turned out to be a guy in a red and blue spandex suit, who flipped over Steve's head, snagging the shield and simultaneously ensnaring Steve's hands with some kind of adhesive fluid. The guy landed in a dramatic kneel on an airport tug vehicle, holding the shield aloft. He lifted his head to reveal a full-head red mask with white slitted eyes.

"What the  _shit_ is that," Maggie murmured to herself, then realized that everyone over the comms just heard her. No one answered, though. Everyone within sight range was staring at the red and blue… man?

Steve's mouth opened, perplexed.

"Nice job, kid!" Tony called.

The man – kid, thing – straightened. "Thanks!" he said brightly. "Well I could have stuck the landing a little better, it's just the new suit – wait, it's nothing, Mr Stark, it's perfect, thank you-" he was gesturing nervously, and Maggie's eyebrows hiked up her forehead. What was he  _doing?_

Tony was shaking his head. "Yeah, we don't really need to… start a conversation."

"Okay." The thing turned to Steve and awkwardly saluted. "Cap-cap'n." Maggie found herself suddenly smiling, despite the situation. "Big fan. I'm… Spider-Man."

"Yeah, we'll talk about it later," Tony cut in. Maggie blinked – she was very familiar with that tone in his voice, it was the one he often took with her,  _before_ , when she was getting under his feet and asking questions.

Spider-Man waved. "Hey everyone."

"Just… good job," Tony said, holding out a quelling hand.

"You've been busy," Steve noted.

Tony's head whipped around, and it was as if stormclouds rolled over his face. "And you've been a complete  _idiot._ Dragging in Clint, 'rescuing' Wanda from a place she doesn't even want to leave, a safe place!" Steve shifted. Tony was working himself up, and everyone watched silently. "I'm trying to keep-" he was shouting now, so he cut himself off and glanced around, breathing hard. When he looked back, he fixed bright, desperate eyes on Steve. "I'm trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart."

Steve didn't skip a beat. "You did that when you signed."

Tony's mouth went slack with shock and betrayal, and he glanced at the ground for a moment. Maggie could tell he was building up to something, the words rising out of his chest and into his mouth, but when he finally got there, he didn't shout. He met Steve's eyes again, and his words were a low murmur:

"Is my sister with you?"

Maggie's stomach plummeted, and she had to physically press a hand to her abdomen, certain that she was wounded, or bleeding, or something-

She distantly heard Scott ask "wait, what?" over the comms, but she didn't have space in her head for that.

She didn't know what Steve's face looked like, but there was sorrow in his voice when he replied: "she's where she wants to be."

Maggie glanced up, still clutching her stomach, and her heart shattered at the look on Tony's face. His whole face crumpled, and his suit made a whirring sound as his shoulders slumped. Tears sprang to Maggie's eyes. She didn't want to hurt him, she didn't want this, she wished he understood-

But Tony's defeated expression only lasted a moment before the anger came rushing back, hot and burning in his eyes.

"Alright, we're done," he said softly, glancing to Rhodey. When he turned back, his whole bearing was aggressive. "You're going to turn Barnes over and you're going to come with us,  _now_ ," he shouted, "because it's  _us,_ or a squad of JSOC guys with no compunctions about being impolite."

As he spoke, Maggie had to fight back more tears. He sounded so desperate: this was his family, she realized. Not just her, but the people he saved the world with, the people he trusted. Everyone else on the tarmac seemed to realize that this situation couldn't be salvaged, but Tony was still stubbornly trying to make everything okay. Maggie wanted to curl into a ball. She wanted to be anywhere but here.

Steve looked away, not even making eye contact. Maggie just heard Tony's murmured " _come on_."

Sam piped up: "We found it. Their Quinjet's in Hangar 5, north runway."

Maggie's head shot up, locating the hangar. No one needed to say it, but she could hear the almost collective intake of breath over the comms:  _mission is a go_. Maggie rolled her shoulders and narrowed her eyes, ready for action.

Steve raised his trapped arms, Tony's eyes went wide, and suddenly Steve's hands sprang apart, freed by Barton's spot-on shot. Tony spun around as his helmet slipped back over his face.

"Alright Lang," Steve muttered.

In a burst of movement Scott appeared seemingly out of nowhere, kicking Spider-Man in the face, seizing the shield and flipping off the vehicle.

"Whoah, what-what the hell was that?" Rhodey exclaimed.

Scott offered Steve his shield. "I believe this is yours, Captain America!" Steve took the shield, sighing.

Maggie hunkered down close to the roof. Her orders were to stay wide until someone needed backup, she didn't need to be spotted right now.

"Aw, great," she heard Tony sigh. "Alright, there's two on the parking deck and one of them's Maximoff, I'm going to grab her." He fired up his repulsors and jetted away. "Rhodey, you wanna take Cap?"

Rhodey rose as well, and she could see him scanning for more threats. "Got two in the terminal, Wilson and Barnes-"

"Barnes is mine!" snapped the Black Panther, breaking into a sprint toward the terminal. Maggie gritted her teeth.  _Screw orders._ She sprang off the air control tower and fired up her engines, wings glinting in the sunlight as she soared into the sky.

Rhodey must have spotted her, because she heard him call: "And there's one more on the – oh,  _hell_."

Maggie flipped over, red goggles glowing as she closed in on the tarmac. Her tied hair streamed behind her and the air was fresh on her cheeks as she rocketed through the sky, a black silhouette against the blue.

Rhodey hadn't needed to finish his sentence. Tony knew who was coming.

As Maggie swooped toward the tarmac, her eyes darted around to find the best target. The Black Panther was sprinting for the terminal, but Steve was hot on his heels. Rhodey was flying toward Steve, about to intercept him. The Black Widow and Ant-Man were circling each other. Spider-Man shot off more webbing and sprang away, but Maggie let him slide for now – Steve was one against two, and it was obvious what the Black Panther wanted. She veered toward the sprinting super soldier, pushing her engines to their limits.

Rhodey must have underestimated her flight speed, because his attention was still focused on Steve when she grew close. She didn't slow down. She curled into a ball and collided with the War Machine armor feet-first, sending him spiralling off-course. Maggie dipped into a tight turn, and saw that Steve had halted the Panther in his tracks.

"Move, Captain," the Wakandan king threatened, getting to his feet. "I won't ask a second time." The dark intent in his words disturbed Maggie.

She gritted her teeth and dove, catching the Panther unawares as he sprang toward Steve. She dropped in from above, caught his outstretched leg and swung him backwards, sending him skittering along the concrete in a shower of metallic sparks.

When the Black Panther got to his feet again, claws extended, he looked up to see the Wyvern standing beside Captain America on the tarmac, her wings spread threateningly as she stared him down.

Steve glanced out of the corner of his eye at Maggie, taking in her slitted red goggles and the way she spread her arms, as if to throw up a physical barrier between T'Challa and the terminal, where Bucky was.

"You're looking for revenge on the wrong man," Maggie told the king through gritted teeth. He didn't even acknowledge her.

Unbeknownst to Maggie, T'Challa's earpiece heard her just fine, and her voice carried into Team Stark's comms. Tony faltered in the sky on his way to get Clint and Wanda, his whole body jerking at the sound of his sister's voice.

Back on the tarmac, Steve and Maggie tensed when Rhodey appeared again, repulsors whining as he honed in on the stand-off below. His weapons locked on to them.

"I've got T'Challa," Steve muttered.

Maggie didn't doubt him for a second – Steve respected her, trusted her even, and she had the same faith in him. He wouldn't let anyone hurt Bucky.

Maggie nodded once, and as the Black Panther leaped forward again she sprang into the sky, wings outstretched. She rolled, getting her bearings, and her gaze locked on the War Machine armor, which was still closing in on Steve and T'Challa.

Maggie flew straight at him, her flight path fixed in a deadly game of chicken. Rhodey was an obvious target, in his bulky armor with its red glowing arc reactor, and Maggie stared at him as they screamed toward each other in the sky. She swallowed her memories of him from twenty five years ago, keeping her eyes locked on the glowing eye slits in his helmet. He wanted to stop Steve, he'd have to go through her. The wind screamed in her ears.

In the seconds before imminent collision, Maggie heard Rhodey shouting at her: "c'mon, Maggie,  _move_!"

Her eyes widened at the disturbed note to his voice, and at her name, but she only pushed her engines harder.

At the last second Rhodey faltered and swerved, narrowly avoiding collision with her outstretched wings. Maggie took advantage of his hasty diversion and ripped one of the gun turrets off his suit as she zipped past. It made an awful metallic shrieking sound, and she heard Rhodey cursing as he tried to get his balance back mid-flight. She dropped the gun turret, sending it tumbling to the tarmac below.

She and Rhodey wheeled in the air, arcing over planes and airport vehicles, and when they came together again Rhodey fired a repulsor blast at her. She rolled to avoid it, and tried to knock him into a small plane, but he moved with the blow and almost managed to grab her foot. They veered apart again, trying to get a better angle on each other. Maggie powered up the energy blaster fitted to her wrist –  _thanks, Barton_  – and fired a shot at Rhodey as they made another pass at each other. The ball of bright white energy sailed over his shoulder, and Maggie cursed.

Maggie could tell that Rhodey was disturbed by fighting her, and she couldn't say she was feeling great about the situation. His suit was also unpredictable, turning and maneuvering in unfamiliar ways that almost caught her out. As she veered to avoid a series of repulsor blasts, she heard the unmistakable sounds of other fights over the comms: Barton and Wanda sparring with Tony, Steve going toe to toe with the Panther, Scott having some kind of scuffle with Romanoff. She heard Bucky shout in alarm, and realized that he and Sam were fighting with someone, too – she did a quick head count and cursed when she realized Spider-Man must have gone after them. The sound of loud impacts, shouts and shattering glass came over their side of the comms, and Maggie gritted her teeth.

Spurred on by this new sense of urgency, Maggie forgot about going easy on Rhodey. In an agile, blindingly fast move she'd learned when she was sixteen, she feinted away from one of his dives and flipped above him in the air. She pulled a concussive blast grenade from her belt – another gift from Barton – and tossed it.

With a flash of light and a surprisingly loud explosion, the grenade knocked the armor out of the sky and into a catering truck. Maggie eyed the War-Machine sized hole in the truck for a second.

"Sorry, Rhodey," she muttered, and then spiraled away, heading for the terminal. Rhodey would be up again soon, but not soon enough for him to catch her.

With the glass and steel terminal in her sights, Maggie focused back on what she could hear over the commlink. In amongst all the chaos of everyone else's fights, she heard Spider-Man's high, animated voice jabbering at Sam about… the rigidity-flexibility ratio of his wings?

"I don't know if you've ever been in a fight before, but there's usually not this much talking." Sam sounded pissed, and if he was talking then he wasn't fighting back, which made Maggie nervous. She pushed her wings harder, arcing across the airport.

With a quick gesture, she adjusted her goggles so she could zoom in on the windows of the terminal, trying to see what was going on. The lens focused just in time for her to see Bucky throw himself in front of Sam, shielding him from Spider-Man's swinging assault. Spider-Man kicked them both through a glass pane and sent them plummeting to the floor below in a burst of shattered glass.

Maggie's eyes narrowed, fixing her glare on the still-jabbering Spider-Man. She streamlined her body so she sliced through the air like a knife, soaring towards the little asshole who'd just kicked Bucky to the ground.

Redwing got to Spider-Man half a second before she did. She saw the flying robot latch onto the suited guy's hand, knocking his aim off-course as he went to fire more adhesive webbing at Sam and Bucky.

Redwing didn't have him long, though. Maggie exploded through the windows on one side of the terminal, seized a handful of Spider-Man's suit, and used her momentum to smash him through the windows on the other side. She got the barest glimpse of Bucky and Sam pinned to the ground a floor below before she was soaring away again, Spider-Man squawking in alarm in her grasp.

Bucky and Sam had only seen Maggie as a metallic, red-eyed blur, there one second and gone the next, leaving the echo of screaming engines in her wake.

"Thanks, Meg," came Bucky's tired voice over the comms, making the corner of her mouth quirk up. Then she heard him say to Sam: "You couldn't have done that earlier?"

"I hate you."

Maggie turned her focus back to the squirming weirdo she was hauling through the air, just as he managed to wriggle his suit out from between her gauntleted fingers. He threw out another line of webbing, flipping away from her attempt to get him back. He was  _fast_.

Just as she thought that, he did a complicated spin and shot a blob of webbing at her wings. The stuff caught her mid-turn, trapping her left wing while it was folded up and sending her tumbling out of the sky. The world became a kaleidoscope of colour, whirling wildly around her.

But with a simple shrug, her Adamantium skeleton sliced through the webbing and she snapped her wings out, flying free. She turned her red-goggled glare on Spider-Man, who was  _still chattering_ as he swung around a pylon, avoiding her.

"Oh wow," he gushed, "now those are some cool wings. Mr Stark said you might be here, but to be honest I don't know if I really believed him."

Maggie didn't know if he meant to do it, but just that short sentence managed to get into her head, distracting her from the fight for an instant.  _Tony had thought she'd be here? What did he say about her?_ She almost collided with the pylon as she swooped after the red-and-blue clad kid.

Unfortunately for Spider-Man, he'd also just pissed her off. She almost caught his foot, but he squirmed out of her grasp again.

"Jeez," he gasped, flipping over a truck and flinging a stray tyre at her. She just flew right through it, her Adamantium wing slicing the tyre clean in half. "You're a lot scarier than he said you'd be." He flung out another line of webbing to launch himself away again, but before he was even a few feet in the air Maggie flicked one of her heel spurs through the webbing, sending him tumbling back to the ground with a grunt of surprise.

"Oh man, you have knives in your feet?" he said, springing back up. "How do you even get knives in your feet? That's so cool!"

Maggie scowled. "Yeah, you wanna see 'em?" She swooped on him, both heel spurs extended, and Spider-Man yelped and dove away.

Maggie wasn't really going to stab him – she could hear the youth and inexperience in his voice, but she was getting seriously annoyed at him. She chased him around the tarmac, dodging his webbing and giving him a healthy fear of her heel spurs. There was a huge explosion over the comms, and Maggie glanced sideways to see a plume of fire and black smoke go up from the main part of the tarmac, where Steve had been.

"Oh man, I thought it was a water truck," she heard Scott say. "Uh… sorry."

A few seconds later, Maggie was trading a few punches with Spider-Man when Steve's voice came over the comms: "Alright focus up everyone, we're going to push through to the Quinjet. Converge on the luggage depot."

Maggie blinked.  _Right_. She'd gotten so caught up in her fear for Bucky and then her irritation at Spider-Man that she'd lost sight of the end goal.

Spider-Man must have gotten a similar order over his comms, because he ducked one of her punches and said "Hey, I've gotta go back to my team now, should we just, like, call a time out?"

Maggie rolled her eyes, but she supposed it wasn't a bad idea. "Ugh, whatever." She flipped a grenade out from a holster on her back and tossed it at Spider-Man, knowing that he'd dodge in time. But he was sufficiently distracted by the fiery explosion, giving her enough cover to jump back into the sky and fly toward the luggage depot.

 

* * *

 

Maggie flew low and fast toward the luggage depot, careening past airplane supply vehicles and small aircraft.

She spotted the red and black figures of Wanda and Barton first, sprinting out from behind a stack of crates, and she matched pace with them, wings spread. They glanced over their shoulders at the sound of engines but relaxed when they spotted her. Barton even gave her a small salute.

"There's our ride!" He said, pointing at the Quinjet in the hangar up ahead.

Scott and Steve emerged from a line of vehicles, falling into step just in front of Barton.

"C'mon!" Steve called, with a wave of his hand, and Sam and Bucky veered in from the right. Maggie ran a concerned eye over Bucky, but he seemed okay. His hair whipped around his face as he ran, and his arm gleamed in the sun. He glanced up at her, and she could see him checking her for injuries as well. She smiled and sped up a little so she was flying over their motley team, casting the shadow of her wings over them as they ran. She lifted her gaze, focusing on the Quinjet.

But as they ran out into open space, they were suddenly cut off by a beam of some kind of energy, which scorched through the air and burned a crater in the concrete. Maggie flared her wings and flapped them frantically, trying to back away from the glowing beam. She came to a faltering landing between Wanda and Bucky, heart pounding at her near miss. She glanced down at the smoking line in the ground, and then up at the thing in their way.

She immediately recognised him as Vision: one of the newest recruits to the Avengers, and certainly the most mysterious. She knew he was an android, and as she peered up at him she could see his artificial, robotic face, and his strange colouring. He floated eerily in the air, as if he wasn't quite a part of the world they lived in. The part of Maggie that wasn't frustrated at being blocked was fascinated by him: he was one of a kind, a completely cybernetic being.

"Captain Rogers!" called Vision, and Maggie raised an eyebrow at his British accent. "I know you believe what you're doing is right."

Maggie didn't listen to the rest of what he said, because Iron Man had just landed on the ground beside Vision, carrying the Black Widow.

Maggie's mouth went dry. She was suddenly glad that her eyes were hidden by her goggles, because they'd shot wide open, and were suddenly brimming with tears. She didn't even look at the others as they landed in one way or another between her team and the Quinjet. Her eyes were locked on Iron Man, and though his helmet's glowing eye slits were inscrutable, she just knew that he was staring back at her. Maggie realized that this was the first time he'd seen her in twenty-five years.

She felt as if there was an invisible cord running between the two of them, stretching across the vast gulf of no-man's-land on the tarmac. Maggie was rooted to the spot, her breaths coming fast. She could feel Bucky looking at her, concern etched across his face, but she couldn't spare him a glance. She couldn't even blink – her eyes were itching uncomfortably because of how long they'd been snapped open, staring at her brother.

There was a long silence between the two groups of superheroes, filled with hundreds of unsaid things. Everyone was still and silent. Maggie felt like she was falling apart.

This was it, then. Somehow, hundreds of actions, choices and allegiances had led to this; she and Tony finally reuniting here, on opposite sides of a battle that threatened to tear a family apart.

Maggie swallowed. Ever since her memories of Tony returned, she had known that she would never hurt her brother. But she also knew that she couldn't step away from this fight. The two terrible truths clashed against each other in her heart, threatening to bring her to her knees.

She stood behind Steve and Bucky, a few feet to Wanda's left. Her skin prickled at the awareness that she was being stared at, and her wings shifted nervously, almost unconsciously. She could sense similar reticence and determination in her teammates: they didn't want to do this. But they had to.

Simultaneously, Maggie and Bucky's heads turned and they shared a look heavy with meaning. There was no specific message there, nothing to be conveyed except… love. Maggie found that that comforted her, that despite her wretchedness and the breaking hearts at this airport, there was someone who loved her unconditionally. Her heart ached, and she wished she could whisk Bucky away from here, away from the people who wanted to hurt him and punish him for a crime he wasn't guilty of.

It was then that Sam asked: "What do we do, Cap?"

Maggie saw Steve's shoulders rise and fall, determined, and a shiver went down her spine.

"We fight."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry!


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bit of an early update because I love you guys, and a quick Tony POV to start, by popular request!
> 
> Also, who saw the Captain Marvel trailer? Are you excited? Because I'm excited. If you're on Tumblr come hang out with me – my username is princesszorldo, I'm trying to get better at this whole writing-and-having-a-tumblr-and-talking-about-writing thing. I mostly just reblog MCU stuff though *shrugs*

 

 

He had hoped she wouldn't be here. And he had hoped she would be.

Still, the sight of the Wyvern – of  _Maggie_ – standing on the other side of that tarmac shook him to his core. He'd known he'd be conflicted the first time he saw her, torn between being glad she was alive and afraid that she'd be completely unrecognizable to him. He hadn't expected the hurt or the betrayal, but that was what he felt as he saw his sister standing between a murderer and a rogue Avenger, her allegiances clear.

She looked like she had in the footage from D.C., with the ominous metal wings, the black combat outfit and the red goggles. If he hadn't known who she was, Tony might be searching for potential weak points in her mechanical wings, cracks in her armor, but he couldn't bring himself to even look.

She wasn't wearing a cowl this time, and Tony could see glimpses of her face. Her mouth was pressed into a hard line.

He'd heard her voice over the comms:  _you're looking for revenge on the wrong man._ She'd sounded determined, defiant, and in truth Tony hadn't really listened to her words – the instant he'd heard her voice he could think of nothing else but  _that's my sister._ No wonder Wanda and Clint had gotten the drop on him.

Tony could tell that Maggie was looking at him from behind her red goggles. He'd give anything to know what she was thinking. Did she even know who he was? Did she even know who  _she_ was? And if she did, how could she stand on the other side of this battleground?

He watched as Maggie's gaze finally lifted from his armor, and turned to Barnes. They only looked at each other for a moment or two, but it felt like a lifetime.

Steve's words echoed in Tony's head:  _she's where she wants to be._

Tony steeled himself. He'd warned T'Challa and Parker that a dangerous woman with metal wings might be there, and had told them to use nonlethal force on  _every_ member of Steve's team. This fight would end, one way or another, and then he would have his sister back. As for what he'd do then…

Before Tony could follow that line of thought, Steve stepped into action.

 

* * *

 

When Steve took that first step forward into no-man's-land, Maggie fell into step behind him without even thinking about it. Her heart was still pounding and aching, but her mind was focused – she had her mission.

The team across the tarmac from them started walking forward as well, matching their strides. The only one whose face she could properly see – the Black Widow – looked reluctant, but determined. Maggie rolled her shoulders and focused on her opponents, instead of just her brother. She could read most of their body language enough to work out who was going for who, and she sized up their potential strengths and weaknesses. She didn't care who she had to fight, as long as it wasn't Tony.

Steve broke into a jog, and Maggie echoed his pace unconsciously. Her wings clicked and whirred where they were folded against her back, ready for instant takeoff.

"They're not stopping!" she heard Spider-Man shout, alarmed.

She didn't know what Tony said to that, but suddenly his team was sprinting, Iron Man and War Machine taking flight, repulsors roaring.

Maggie and Sam snapped their wings open simultaneously and soared into the air. Wanda sprang into the sky after them, hands glowing red. In the back of her mind, Maggie reflected that she didn't realise the Scarlet Witch could fly.

But the time for reflection was over. Goggles slitted, she rocketed over Steve and Bucky's heads, billowing them with her downdraft. She saw Iron Man go high, leaping up for a downward punch aimed at Steve, so she went low, diving on the Black Panther before he could go for Bucky.

But the Panther was ready for her this time – as the rest of the superheroes collided with a roar of engines and clashing metal, T'Challa rolled under her quicker than she'd expected, and she careened over his head. She didn't have time to turn around before Bucky was engaging the Panther, so she pushed off the ground with one foot to boost herself back into the sky, flipped around and searched for a new target.

It was chaos. Maggie aimed her energy blaster at Vision's back, hitting him with a burst of white energy just as Barton managed to shoot him with some kind of taser arrow. She followed it up with a punch aimed at his chest, but Vision went all blurry and her hand flew straight through him, throwing her off balance. She zig-zagged away through the air, certain he was about to zap her with his glowing stone, but she was surprised when she didn't hear it. But there wasn't any time to think about that, or about anything.

She found herself caught up with the rest of the fliers, zipping in and out with Sam as they fought against Rhodey and Vision, ducking and swerving over the battles on the ground. Spider-Man shot globs of webbing at them, trying to trip them up, until Wanda gave him her own projectiles to worry about.

There was no time to think, to focus. Maggie was surrounded by powers and engines and the chorus of shouts and impacts over the comms. It was all so  _loud._ The edge of her vision was filled with the red glow of Wanda's powers, and her ears rang with repulsor blasts and the chime of Vibranium. She could barely keep an eye out for Bucky, but what little she did see of him reassured her that he was holding his own against T'Challa. She couldn't break away for long enough to help him, though she fired her energy blaster at T'Challa's black suit whenever she saw it.

She grounded herself to pull Spider-Man off Scott, tossing him into a shipping container. It was because of all the chaos that she didn't get a proper look at the person behind her before she threw a punch at them, only to have her fist caught in a red and gold metal gauntlet, while the other gauntlet came up to aim at her face, glowing with a charging repulsor blast.

She and Iron Man both froze. They stared at each other for a heartbeat, with Maggie's fist in his hand. With a whine, his repulsors powered down. Red goggles met glowing white eye slots.

But before they could do anything else about it an arrow detonated between them, knocking them apart. They threw themselves back into the fight: Iron Man rocketed after the Falcon, and Maggie leaped to cover Steve from one of Rhodey's repulsor blasts.

Maggie did her best to avoid Tony after that, and either she was crazy or Iron Man wasn't really trying to go after her either. She did intercept a repulsor blast aimed for Scott with her wing, though, and when she rolled upwards she saw that it must have come from Iron Man. He hovered in the air for a moment, watching her, before Steve's shield knocked him backwards and he jumped back into the fight.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie spotted T'Challa raining down blows on Bucky, herding him away from the others. Heart pounding, Maggie tossed a smoke grenade at Vision to give herself some cover and veered away. Spider-Man sprang up, trying to get in her way, but she knocked him aside with a shrug of her wings.

"I didn't kill your father," Bucky said, his metal hand on T'Challa's throat and T'Challa's claws reaching for his face.

"Then why did you run?" came T'Challa's menacing voice, and he managed to pull Bucky's metal arm away in an impossible display of strength. Still a few seconds away, Maggie felt a thrill of fear go through her.

Bucky and T'Challa exchanged a few blows, rolled along the ground, and then T'Challa kicked Bucky in the face, knocking him through the air and into a stack of crates.

T'Challa was fast, springing for Bucky's throat with his claws extended, but Maggie was faster. She dropped in from the top of the crates and stomped on T'Challa's outstretched arm, knocking his claws away and buying Bucky a moment's reprieve. She threw her elbow at T'Challa's jaw and slammed her own clawed gauntlet into his chest, sending him stumbling back.

Maggie sensed Bucky climb to his feet behind her. She advanced on T'Challa, breathing heavily. All the chaos and fear of the fight was catching up to her, and the image of T'Challa's claws against Bucky's neck burned behind her eyes like a brand.

"What part," she hissed, and blocked a series of kicks as T'Challa attacked. She retaliated with a leg sweep of her own. "Of  _you've got the wrong guy-_ " He tried to leap over her, but she snagged his foot and slammed him to the ground. "Don't you understand?" she finished, shouting now.

Bucky had recovered now, and he launched against T'Challa with a knee to the face. She and Bucky worked together, raining down blows on the Wakandan king, until a red glow suddenly appeared at T'Challa's chest and flung him away.

Bucky and Maggie glanced up to see Wanda, who nodded breathlessly at them and then ran back to the main part of the fight. They glanced back at each other, sharing a concerned glance. But there wasn't time, they could hear the rest of their team struggling over the comms.

Maggie touched her fingers briefly to Bucky's stubbled jaw, making his eyes soften, and then they pulled apart again, dashing in different directions. Bucky followed Wanda back to the main fight, but Maggie doubled back to where she'd seen the Widow lying on the ground after being taken out by Wanda.

This part of the airport was relatively quiet, filled with abandoned vehicles and shipping containers. It was a good place to hide.

But Maggie's goggles were equipped with thermal vision. She located the Widow quickly, spotting her orange glow slipping toward the fight, using gantries and vehicles as cover.

Maggie cocked her head. The Widow wasn't throwing herself headfirst into this fight. She'd chosen to go up against her friend, Barton, who she must have known wouldn't hurt her, just as much as she wouldn't hurt him. And now it seemed she was slipping around the edges of the battle, watching.

Curious, Maggie circled around so that she appeared in view a few feet away from Romanoff, her wings folded against her back and her posture carefully loose.

Romanoff stopped in her tracks, but other than that didn't obviously react to Maggie's presence. The two women eyed each other for a moment, not moving a muscle.

After a few beats of silence, Maggie inclined her head. "Widow," she murmured. The roaring engines and shouts of the fight seemed distant.

Romanoff cocked her head, her face unreadable. "Wyvern." Her voice was measured, calm, as if they weren't in the middle of a war.

Maggie could see an opportunity here. The fight was confusing, overwhelming, but she couldn't let her team be stopped here at this airport. Surely if anyone would be open to understanding why Steve and his team were so determined, it was Romanoff: a woman who had been trained to read people and situations since she was a child. Not only that, but surely Romanoff understood her friends.

"Steve would do anything for Bucky," Maggie began, keeping her voice pitched low. Romanoff's eyes narrowed.

"But this?" Maggie said, tipping her head towards the sound of battle. "He wouldn't… he wouldn't bring in his friends, people he wants to protect, just to keep Bucky from going to prison. He wouldn't put them at risk like that. You  _know_ there's more to this." Slowly, she reached up and pulled her goggles off her eyes, resting them on her forehead. She met Romanoff's green, suspicious eyes evenly. "I know you have no reason to trust me. But trust what makes  _sense._ There is something much worse out there, and Steve is trying to stop it." At that, Maggie let her hands fall loose by her sides, and held her breath.

Romanoff's face flickered, but Maggie couldn't read it. The other woman looked directly into her eyes, and Maggie didn't know what she saw there. Hopefully the truth.

Finally, Romanoff said: "I'm beginning to see that."

With a small exhale, Maggie relaxed. But in that brief moment Romanoff snapped into action, bringing her arm up and shooting a small, electric blue disc right into Maggie's chest.

"Ah!" Maggie gasped, as the disc latched onto her suit and discharged a painful electric current, bringing her to her knees. For three terrible seconds the electricity paralyzed her, making her grunt in pain, but then it faded and the small disc dropped to the ground.

Maggie looked up, gasping, and the Black Widow was gone.

She didn't know quite what to make of what just happened, but she was wasting time here. "Sneaky asshole," she muttered, readjusting her goggles and snapping her wings open. With another mumbled curse she took off, soaring into the sky once more and spiraling upwards to get a focus on the situation.

She instantly saw where she was needed: Sam was flying against Iron Man, War Machine  _and_ Vision, and he was having a hard time of it. If the detonating arrows in the air were any indication then Clint was backing him up from the ground, but he needed a wingman. Or wingwoman, as it were.

Maggie rocketed over to the melee just as Scott somehow infiltrated Tony's suit. Glad she didn't have to deal with him just yet, she soared over Sam's shoulder and used her wing to deflect a repulsor blast meant for him.

"Hey, thanks," Sam said, sounding out of breath as he dodged and weaved. "You gonna stop slacking off now?"

Maggie smirked, flipping over backwards to get a good angle on Rhodey with her energy blaster. "Only if you're going to stop sucking."

"Wow, are you actually ten years old?"

She elected to ignore that, as Rhodey was now hot on her tail, firing repulsor blasts and flares as he tried to knock her out of the sky. She found herself remembering things about flying that she'd half forgotten, using her body and her mind to bring her wings to their full potential. She cut through the air, weightless and powerful.

She could hear Scott taunting Tony from within his suit over the comms – it made her uncomfortable, but she knew Scott wouldn't really hurt him.

Half a minute of breakneck flying later, Maggie was teaming up with Sam to try to trick Rhodey and Vision into tripping each other up, when Bucky's voice came over the comms:

"We gotta go," she heard him say. "That guy's probably in Siberia by now."

"We gotta draw out the fliers," Steve replied, and Maggie guessed by the relative quiet from their end of the comms that they were together.

But then what they'd said sunk in, and Maggie cursed when she realised Steve was right. She and Sam were holding their own, but it'd be impossible to get the whole team through to the Quinjet with the way the others were sticking to them.

Steve continued: "I'll take Vision, you get to the jet." Maggie almost rolled her eyes – there was no way Steve could hold up against the android on his own, she was having enough trouble and she had Sam by her side.

Sam piped up before she could: "No, you get to the jet! Both of you!" Sam swooped low, Rhodey on his tail, and Maggie dove in beside them, aiming energy blasts at Rhodey. "The rest of us aren't getting out of here," Sam continued.

Maggie's heart sank, because she knew he was right.

"As much as I hate to admit it," Clint added, out of breath, "if we're going to win this one, some of us might have to lose it."

Maggie gritted her teeth and focused on tossing a series of flares at Vision, distracting him. Her wings pulled taut as she veered away.

"This isn't the real fight, Steve," said Sam.

There was a moment of silence. Then:

"Meg," came Bucky's low voice, with a thread of panic.

Maggie's heart ached. "They're right, Bucky." She had to cut herself off to avoid a repulsor blast from War Machine. "You and Steve need to go, we'll hold them off." She couldn't leave Sam, Clint and Scott like this – they needed her help.

"Meg,  _no-_ "

"This is the mission, Bucky," she interrupted, and she was surprised how steady her voice was. "You need to finish it."

He didn't reply to that, and she took his silence as agreement. Then Rhodey hit her with a repulsor blast, sending her tumbling out of control over the stacks of crates. She caught herself just in time, gasping as her feet scraped a metal container, and as she steadied herself she saw Bucky and Steve crouched behind cover, looking up at her. Maggie righted herself, fired up her engines and jetted back to the fight, savouring one last glance at Bucky's dark haired, metal-armed form.

"Alright Sam," Steve said in a low voice. "What's the play?"

"We need a diversion," Sam said. "Something big."

Maggie caught up to Sam and tried to shake Rhodey off his tail as they jetted under a gantry, rattling machinery. As she did, she mentally ran through her arsenal – she was running out of grenades, so she was mostly relying on the energy blaster mounted on her arm. She didn't have anything big.

"I've got something kind of big," Scott piped up. "But I can't hold it very long."

Maggie's eyebrows shot up.

"On my signal, run like hell. And if I tear myself in half, don't come back for me."

Over the comms, Bucky muttered "he's gonna tear himself in half?"

"You sure about this, Scott?" Steve asked.

"I do it all the time!" Scott replied, puffing as if he was running. "I mean once, in a lab. And then I passed out."

Maggie's mind suddenly turned to theoretical Pym Particles, despite how badly she needed to focus on getting away from Vision, who seemed to be trying to grab her. She had a sudden, horrible thought about what Scott might be talking about. "Scott, don't-"

But he was just muttering "I'm the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the  _boss_!"

For a few seconds nothing happened, and Maggie started desperately thinking of something she could do to cause a distraction, as she scraped against the ground in an effort to dodge Vision. Could she surrender herself? Would that distract enough fighters to give Steve and Bucky time to get to the Quinjet?

But then, with a sound like a clap of thunder, Lang appeared seemingly out of nowhere and rocketed upwards and outwards, until he was at least seventy feet tall. He towered over the nearby plane and the rest of the airport, a giant in a red and black suit. He seized Rhodey's feet, laughing madly.

Maggie's mouth dropped open. She was so busy staring at Scott's humongous form that she almost didn't realize she was about to run into him. She flared her wings, veering away, then rolled onto her back so she could keep staring. "Scott, oh my…" she trailed off. She'd seen plenty of things in her life; assassins and glowing stones and Helicarriers falling out of the sky, but she'd never seen anything like this. Scott was  _enormous_. He made everything around him look like a toy.

_Hank Pym is a freaking genius._

Rhodey was panicking, trying to use his repulsors to get away, but he was caught in Scott's grip like a ragdoll.

Steve and Bucky stepped out from their cover, and Steve said: "I guess that's the signal."

"Way to go, Tic-Tac!" Sam whooped, laughing.

Maggie was so busy staring at the giant on the tarmac that she almost forgot about the mission. When she remembered, she huffed a laugh.  _That's a pretty good distraction._ "Looking good, Scott!" she called.

She blinked when she heard Tony's helmeted voice: "Give me back my Rhodey."

That kicked off the fight again. Sam swooped down and kicked Tony in the face. Scott threw Rhodey like a frisbee, flinging him past the eerily floating Vision, but Spider-Man managed to catch him before he collided with the nearby plane. Maggie raised an eyebrow.  _Maybe the kid isn't so bad after all._

Scott was having fun playing Godzilla with the airport, distracting the others, so Maggie hovered by the terminal and waited to engage the first person who noticed that Steve and Bucky were missing.

Sure enough, the Black Panther spotted the two super soldiers sprinting for the hangar, and started chasing after them.  _I'm getting real sick of that guy._

As she extended her wings and dove toward the Panther, Maggie noticed Sam clonk Tony in the face with Redwing, knocking him backwards. Her lips thinned, but she reminded herself – again – that no one really wanted to hurt Tony.

Scott got to T'Challa before Maggie did. "Wanna get to them? You gotta go through me." He kicked the crates out from under T'Challa with one enormous boot, sending wood splinters flying everywhere, then went to grab him. But then Scott's face lit up with explosions, and he stumbled back at Rhodey's attack.

Maggie continued where Scott left off. She swooped once more on the Black Panther, firing energy blasts at his head. He rolled away, sprinting toward the hangar, but then Barton was there with his bow and arrow, firing shot after shot at the Wakandan.

Maggie rolled onto her back for a second to fire a couple of energy blasts at Rhodey. It gave Scott a few seconds to get his balance back. When she rolled again, diving back to the two men fighting on the tarmac, T'Challa let two arrows detonate on either side of his face and got to his feet, unharmed. Maggie raised an eyebrow. She remembered Steve saying something about that suit being made of Vibranium.

"We haven't met yet," said Barton, as he flicked his bow into a staff. "I'm Clint."

"I don't care."

The two men launched at each other, and Maggie came in on Barton's flank to throw kicks and punches at the Panther, helping to slow him down. As he dodged her razor-sharp wings, Maggie sensed the king getting more and more pissed off at her. This was the third time she'd gotten in his way. Well, she shared the feeling.

Maggie and Barton worked surprisingly well together, coordinating their strikes as they attacked the agile Panther. Maggie knew when to duck under Barton's whirling staff, knew when he was going to go low, so she could go high. At one point Maggie crouched and dipped her outstretched wing, making it rigid, and Clint used it as a springboard to leap up and get some height on the Panther. As she retracted her wing and dove for the Panther's knees, Maggie was surprised at herself – she and Clint hadn't discussed that move at all, but she'd just  _known_ to do it.

Out of the corner of her eye Maggie saw War Machine fly after Steve and Bucky. But he was intercepted by a blast of red energy, so Maggie decided to leave Wanda to it.

With a resounding thud, Vision slammed into Scott's massive chest. Maggie caught one of T'Challa's punches and glanced at Scott, concerned, as he stumbled backwards into a plane.

Vision went still in the air, and Maggie just knew that his gaze was trained on Steve and Bucky running toward the Quinjet.  _Shit._ She was under no illusions about the relative powers of the people here – the android was unmistakably superior, with abilities none of the others could even dream of, save maybe Wanda. And Wanda was busy with Rhodey.

Maggie leaped onto T'Challa's back and used him as a launch pad, springing off his shoulders and into the air before he could catch her. She felt a little bad about leaving Barton to deal with T'Challa, but he seemed like he could hold his own.

"Something just flew in me!" yelled a panicked Scott, and Maggie spiralled upwards to see that Vision had phased through Scott and was now floating toward the hangar. Maggie soared over Scott's shoulder, chasing the android, but she didn't get to him in time.

Vision shot a golden, powerful beam from the stone in his forehead. It sliced through the hangar's control tower like butter, sending it crumbling toward the hangar entrance.

"No!" Maggie cried.

But then Wanda, that incredible woman, caught the tower with her glowing red powers. Maggie let out a breath of relief, seeing that Steve and Bucky were going to make it. She rocketed toward Vision before he could do anything else to stop them, her engines whining as she closed in on him. She fired her energy blaster but he let the bolts phase through him, his face surprisingly expressive as she approached. She could see that he was disturbed by this fight as well.

When she reached Vision Maggie threw her fist at him, but he moved lightning-fast and caught her wrist in an impossibly tight grip, stealing her momentum and trapping her in mid-air. Crying out, Maggie pummelled her other fist against his chest. It was like trying to hit a brick wall. She strained her engines, trying to pull away. Her legs kicked helplessly, and she wrenched at the iron grip around her arm.

"I do not want to hurt you, Ms Stark," Vision said in his solemn, measured voice. It made her falter for a moment, but then she fired her energy blaster right into his face. Vision sighed and then  _threw_ her, sending her tumbling backwards toward where Scott was fending off War Machine, Iron Man and Spider-Man. She crashed through a gantry, getting tangled in twisted metal and shattered glass.

Trapped in the destroyed gantry, Maggie groaned. Her whole body ached, and she was  _tired_. They'd probably only been fighting for less than half an hour, but it felt like days. Distantly, she registered the sound of the tower thundering to the ground outside the hangar. She hoped Bucky and Steve made it. She focused in on the comms, and outside of the havoc Scott was causing she heard Romanoff's low voice as she changed sides, protecting Steve and Bucky from T'Challa.

Maggie dropped her head back against one of the last pylons holding up the gantry, wincing as the crushed metal around her pressed into her bruised back. It hurt like hell, but she just wanted to lie down. She was tired of fighting, especially against her brother. Her wings loosened, flattening against the awkwardly twisted pile of metal beneath her. She closed her eyes.

_Get up, Maggie._

The voice that resounded in her mind wasn't cold, like her remembered echoes of the Wyvern. It didn't sound like anyone she knew, either. It was just  _her_ , her own voice, telling her she wasn't done yet.

_Get up._

Groaning, Maggie jerked her shoulders free of the crumpled gantry and shook her head to clear it. There was something left for her to do.

She pulled her head out of the trashed gantry just in time to see Scott topple backwards, thudding to the ground with a resounding crash. Maggie clenched her jaw but didn't go to him. Scott had done his job as a distraction perfectly, but there was a mission to compete. Swinging around, Maggie assessed the situation.

Vision was crouched on the tarmac beside Wanda, who was clutching her head, and Maggie's heart leaped when she saw that the Quinjet was aloft, about to fly out of the nearly destroyed hangar. An impossible hope bloomed in her chest –  _she could go with them_. She was sure she could keep pace with the jet long enough to climb aboard. Steve and Bucky could use all the help they could get, and she was still in action.

But as Maggie watched, the Quinjet started hovering out of the hangar, and a figure in black leaped up and clung to the jet's landing gear. The landing gear retracted but the figure sank his claws into the Quinjet's underbelly, holding on despite the slipstream. The Quinjet flew out of the hangar with the stowaway attached.

Maggie's heart skipped a beat, and she surged forward without a second thought.

Over the comms, Steve muttered "Buck, can you see him?"

Maggie plowed out of the crushed gantry, engines roaring as she pushed herself to maximum speed. "I've got him, go!" she called, and as Steve took off he tilted the Quinjet to give her a better angle.

Maggie's eyes focused on T'Challa, clinging to the bottom of the jet and using his claws to inch forward to the windshield. He was strong, she had to give him that. And determined.

Steve and Bucky, in the pilot and copilot's seats, spotted the Wyvern as she rocketed below the nose of the jet, and the sound of her engines washed over them. A second later they saw her shoot out from under the other side with her arms tightly linked around the Black Panther's middle, tearing him away from his prey.

"Thanks, Maggie," Steve breathed, and Maggie smiled sadly as she heard the Quinjet flying away.

But she didn't have time to respond to Steve because T'Challa was fighting back now, trying to claw out of her grip as they sailed back to the airport. His suit was hard to get a grip on, but she had him trapped in a bear hug, so he wasn't slipping away anytime soon. She could feel his fury at having been plucked away from his revenge. The Quinjet was a fading roar.

Seconds later, Maggie heard the others going after the Quinjet, and she picked up her pace – Steve and Bucky needed backup to get out of here free and clear, so she needed to get T'Challa back down safely and then go to help. Even if she couldn't go with them, she could make sure they got away to do what needed to be done.

Furious, T'Challa managed to drive his knee into Maggie's ribs, making her gasp and jerk to the side. She readjusted her grip, scowling, and aimed for the tarmac. She considered the chances of still being able to convince T'Challa he was after the wrong guy.

But then, before she realised what he was trying to do, T'Challa's gauntlets were on her back, on her wing-

There was a shrieking metallic sound, splintering and cracking. Maggie winced at the noise. Half a second later, the pain hit.

It was as if a bomb went off in her cybernetic neurons – blinding white pain erupted in her synapses, scorched up her back and into the base of her neck, making her scream and seize up. Maggie's whole body recoiled, and she could feel the metal on her bones  _pulling,_ stretching in ways it was never meant to. She heard her own ribs cracking.

Maggie's vision whited out from the pain, but she knew she was falling – she instinctively knew that tumbling, weightless feeling. She couldn't move.

Seconds later she crunched into the tarmac, landing on her right wing and screeching along the ground in a shower of sparks. The collision jarred her entire body and her skin scraped along the ground, bringing new heights to her pain. Maggie didn't know where T'Challa was, she didn't know what was happening, what had–

She must have checked out for a moment, because she wasn't aware of anything for the next few seconds. But she wasn't unconscious, because when she managed to regain some awareness she was mid-scream, her head arched back in agony as pain surged into her lungs and out her mouth in a wordless cry. Flash memories bloomed behind her eyes, of screaming while her body was torn apart.

There was talking in her ears –  _the commpiece_ , she realised dully. She could hear Bucky's voice, calling her name – no, he was shouting it, the words laced with more fear than she'd ever heard in his voice.

That startled her out of her screaming, and her voice lowered into a long, drawn out groan. She rolled her head, disoriented and sobbing, and the first thing she saw other than the open blue sky was her own blood, pooling on the concrete beneath her. She was lying on her side, resting on her right wing.

Maggie realised her whole body was shuddering. With another long wail she managed to crane her head and glance over her shoulder. Her body went numb at what she saw.

Where her left wing should have been there was only a twisted metal stump, torn off near the root. Blood dripped from the shorn-off end.

At the sight Maggie screamed again, fear and pain flooding her voice, and she looked around wildly for the rest of her wing – she'd lost all sense, she just knew that she  _needed_ her wing, where was it? T'Challa had taken it from her–

But when Maggie lifted her head, briefly spotting the crouched Panther, frozen as he stared at her, the bones in her chest shrieked in pain. She cried out again, her throat raw from it, and her vision started swimming.

On the horizon, a glinting metal person fell out of the sky in a trail of smoke.

Maggie's eyes drifted shut.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really long chapter here, but I didn't want to split it, and fair warning there are some relatively short chapters coming up.  
> Also: you guys are awesome :)

As the Quinjet soared away from the airport and disappeared into the cloud cover, Steve looked over his shoulder.

Bucky was frozen at the other end of the cockpit, his hand pressed against the tiny window. There was nothing left to see, just white clouds and blue sky.

In the panic of the moment, with Maggie's screams in their ears, Bucky had told Steve to turn the Quinjet around. They both knew that wasn't an option, that there wasn't anything they could do but continue with the mission, but that had been hard for Steve to remember when his oldest friend was begging him to turn back with a broken, thready pitch to his voice. And yet he'd stayed the course.

Steve swallowed, the magnitude of all that had just occurred settling heavy on his shoulders. "Buck-"

"He-he  _tore off_ her wing, he just-" Bucky's voice cracked. He trailed off and turned to Steve, his face blank with shock and fear.

Steve turned around fully, meeting his friend's traumatized eyes. "What does that do to her? Is she going to be okay?"

"I… I don't know." He was still rooted in place at the back of the Quinjet. When he spoke again, it was a whisper. "Her wings… they're a part of her, Steve."

Steve couldn't imagine how Bucky felt. He couldn't get Maggie's excruciated, almost inhuman screams out of his head. Could tearing off her wing really do that much damage?

But then he remembered the scans from the Québec base, how the wings had been linked to the metal on her bones, almost so they were extensions of her body. If it was all so connected, then Maggie had just had a limb torn off. Steve's shoulders hunched, and he turned around in his seat.

Wanda. Sam. Clint. Scott.

Maggie.

Rhodey.

Was anything worth the price they'd just paid?

The Quinjet flew on in silence. Bucky didn't move away from the back window for a long time.

 

* * *

 

On the ground miles below, Tony knelt over his best friend's body. He couldn't bear to look at Rhodey's blank, bleeding face, so he glared up at Vision instead. The android looked horrified.

Silence stretched between them, save for the distant wail of sirens.

When Vision did speak, it wasn't what Tony expected. "Your sister…" He trailed off.

Tony had never seen Vision speechless before. His confusion must have showed in his eyes, because Vision glanced over his shoulder towards the main airport, as if in explanation.

Kneeling in the dirt with his gauntleted hands pressed against Rhodey's suit, the pieces clicked together in Tony's mind. He realised he'd heard screaming over the commlink, as he was chasing after the Quinjet and then Rhodey. And the growing horror in Vision's eyes couldn't be mistaken.

"My sister  _what_?" Tony spat out, his chest heaving. But he didn't wait for Vision to get over his newfound speechlessness. He carefully let go of Rhodey and staggered to his feet, his heart wrenching in two directions.

But then he decided. "Look after him," Tony snapped at Vision, and then he was off in a blast of repulsors, not even stopping to put his helmet up.

He reached the main strip of the airport in seconds, and what he saw only brought the edges of a panic attack even closer. This was like his vision from the HYDRA base in Sokovia, made real.

Maggie was crumpled on the ground in a pool of blood, her limbs splayed lifelessly. T'Challa knelt by her side, bare-headed as he pressed his hands against a wound on Maggie's back – Tony realised that her left wing was missing, and there was a metal stump coated in blood a few feet away.

Tony staggered as he landed beside the gruesome scene, running frantic eyes over his sister.

He'd avoided her in the fight, even as he told himself that they all needed to be brought in to stop this madness. He'd heard her voice over the comms, had felt her surprise and hesitation when he caught her fist. He'd expected to have to face her one way or another at the end of the fight, but not like… not like this.

Maggie was a mess. She was completely limp, blood leaking from her damaged wing mooring, and the right side of her body was torn up from her collision with the ground. Tony stumbled toward her and dropped to his knees. With a trembling gauntlet he pulled her goggles off her face, and his heartbeat pounded in his ears when he was met with her closed eyes.

Tony glanced up at T'Challa, who was stemming the bloodflow with a wide-eyed, horrified look on his face. Tony had ordered that they use  _nonlethal_ force, how could this have happened?

Tony managed to croak out: "is she-"

"She is alive," T'Challa replied, glancing at Tony. "But she needs help."

He shuddered, wishing he could summon the ambulances instantly, and pressed two shaking fingers to Maggie's throat. His gauntlets picked up her heartbeat, fluttering and thready, but still there. She was breathing.

Tony was almost vibrating with the force of his emotions now. He looked back up at T'Challa. "You did this?" He didn't recognise his own voice: low and dark.

T'Challa met his eye. "I didn't think…" he glanced down at Maggie's limp body. "I didn't realize they were attached to her." The king wiped the back of his hand across his mouth almost angrily, glancing back up at where the Quinjet had disappeared into the sky. Tony's fingers twitched and curled, forming into fists, but there had been enough fighting on this bloody ground. T'Challa hadn't meant for this to happen, so there was no one left for him to fight. There were just broken bodies.

Emergency vehicles flooded in, ambulances streaming across the field toward Rhodey, Sam, and Vision, and to where Tony knelt by Maggie. A shuddering breath gusted out of Tony's lungs.

As the paramedics worked out how to detach Maggie from her other wing and load her onto the gurney, speaking rapidly about  _internal bleeding_ and  _possible spinal injuries_ , Tony focused for the first time on his sister's face.

It was relaxed. He could almost pretend that she was sleeping, if it weren't for the tiny cuts along her cheek and the smears of blood on her skin. Tony could see himself in her, and he could see their mom and dad. She had mom's nose and dad's jaw, and her face was framed by dark hair. Some of her hair had escaped its ties and was strewn across her sweaty forehead.

As the paramedics hoisted her into the ambulance, Maggie's head lolled to the side.

Then she was gone.

Tony got to his feet, shaking, and wondered if he'd just lost everyone he cared about.

 

* * *

 

Avengers' Quinjet, Undisclosed Location

The silence in the Quinjet was deafening. They flew for hours without a word, Steve piloting the jet and Bucky looking down at his lap.

Bucky couldn't really believe that he'd left Meg behind. She'd told him to, and he'd trusted that she'd be okay, but then he'd watched out the Quinjet window as she tumbled out of the sky, her one remaining wing trailing behind her.

He'd never heard her scream like that, not even when she was in the chair. Just the memory of it made nausea churn in his gut, and he had to take a shuddering breath to keep from being sick.

Her wings were the one thing she'd enjoyed about being the Wyvern. She loved flying, and relief crossed her face whenever she put her wings on. And in a heartbeat she'd just lost one of them. Bucky didn't doubt that she'd felt every second of it.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

Even when he'd had the whole world against him, when he was in the clutches of the JTTF and the Avengers and whoever else, Meg had come for him. And now she'd just had her wing ripped away, and he was flying in the other direction.

Bucky broke the silence first. "What's going to happen to them?"

Steve didn't reply for a long moment. "Whatever it is," he eventually said, his voice rough with guilt, "I'll deal with it."

Typical Steve, taking the world on his shoulders. And if his answer was any indication, he didn't know what was going to happen to his friends. To Maggie. Bucky stared absently through the windshield, his own wretchedness clawing at his insides.

"I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve."

Another long pause. Steve looked over his shoulder. "What you did all those years… it wasn't you. You didn't have a choice."

Bucky's jaw twitched. He remembered the Wyvern's red, glowing glare as she held her claws to his throat in a dark garden.  _You didn't have a choice_ , she'd said, and relaxed her grip. The Soldier had wondered why she didn't kill him.

"I know," Bucky murmured, and then turned to look at Steve. "But I did it."

Steve didn't have a response to that. He turned back around, watching the grey scenery pass below them.

 

* * *

 

Helicopter over the Atlantic Ocean

Tony had had many conversations with different people over the past few hours, and not one of them made him feel any better about himself.

The first had been with Ross. The Secretary of State was understandably displeased about the clusterfuck at the airport, and about Barnes and Steve's escape. Ross had arrived on the scene as Steve's team was getting loaded into armored vehicles, save for Maggie, who was in an ambulance.

"What's going to happen to her?" Tony had asked, making Ross raise one silver eyebrow.

"She'll go to the Raft with the others." Tony didn't know anything about the Raft, but he assumed it was Ross's answer to detaining enhanced individuals. "There are medical facilities there, regular hospitals aren't secure enough for that level of criminal."

"Great, that's great." Tony had nodded absently, not meeting Ross's eyes. Tony was no fool – he knew they were going to run a blood test sooner or later, or T'Challa would work out exactly why Tony was so upset and blab, like he was sure to do about Nat's defection. So he just came out with it: "She's my sister."

If Tony hadn't felt so wretched, he might have enjoyed the look of incredulous befuddlement on Ross's face. As it was, he just waited it out, watching the pieces click together in Ross's mind.

Ross pulled up a hastily-put-together file on the Wyvern, which now had a polaroid of Maggie's unconscious face clipped to it. He glanced from the picture, to Tony's face, and then back down again. Then thunderclouds seemed to roll in over his face, and Tony distantly wondered if that was why people called him 'Thunderbolt' Ross.

Ross shouted at Tony for what felt like hours. But Tony didn't hear it – his emotions were flying in every direction, and he felt like he was coming apart at the seams.

Because Tony had a choice: go to the Raft and stand by as his sister was treated and then imprisoned, or go with Rhodey to support him through whatever diagnosis was coming.

As Ross shouted at him about irresponsible bias, colluding with the enemy, and withholding information, Tony considered his options. He didn't know Maggie – she had chosen this fight, chose to protect Barnes even after his crimes in Vienna, chose to fight so she could keep running. She might be his blood relative but he didn't know her, regardless of how much he cared about her. He knew Rhodey, though, and Rhodey didn't deserve to be alone after what had just happened.

Maggie chose this fight. Rhodey was just doing his job.

As he'd nodded blandly at Ross's shouts, Tony sighed. After years of hunting for Maggie, now that he knew exactly where she was, he had to choose someone else over her. He gritted his teeth. He'd face Maggie when he could bear it. It wasn't like she was going anywhere.

Ross yelled and yelled, but it wasn't like Maggie's identity changed anything, really. She'd made her choices.

 

The second conversation was with Rhodey. After the doctors gave their prognosis and left to consult their notes, the first thing Rhodey asked was:

"Maggie?" His face was creased with concern, though Tony wasn't sure if it was meant for Maggie or for him.

Tony had glanced away, leaning back in the creaky hospital visitor's chair. "She got hurt. By T'Challa, but he says he didn't mean to hurt her. Seems that's going around." He regretted the dig when Rhodey's face darkened, so he went on: "She's on the Raft now. Doctors there say she's going to be okay." He swallowed, wrestling with his own guilt and inadequacy.

Rhodey shut his eyes for a long moment, and Tony was startled at how haggard his friend looked. "I don't know what this says about me," Rhodey murmured, "But… I'm glad she's okay. I'm glad."

 

Then Tony had his whispered, incredulous conversation with the guilt-ridden Vision. Tony was usually so in awe of the android that he'd helped to create, but today… it seemed that not even someone as well-designed as Vision was infallible.

 

His fourth conversation – or rather, argument – was with Nat, snapping back and forth at each other as they looked out over the green forest below. Tony lashed out at her, taking out his anger at Steve, Maggie and the rest of them on her. She saw right through him, as always, hissing "are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?"

He honestly didn't know if he was. But Nat had been his ally – his friend – for years now, so he gave her the heads up that she was next on Ross's most wanted list.

"I'm not the one that needs to watch their back," she told him, looking more upset than he'd ever seen her.

Then she was gone, too.

 

Now, Tony was having a tense conversation with his A.I. as his helicopter thundered over the gloomy, tempestuous ocean. Theo Broussard's murder, Helmut Zemo's infiltration… the pieces were clicking together, making Tony's blood pressure hike with every new realisation.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. continued: "Police also found a wig and facial prosthesis approximating the appearance of one James Buchanan Barnes."

Tony's jaw clenched.  _You're looking for revenge on the wrong man_ , Maggie had told T'Challa. Tony had been so startled by the sound of her voice that he hadn't even listened to what she was saying. Even if he had, he didn't know if he'd have believed her.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, glancing away from Barnes' holographic face.

The hard ball of hurt in Tony's chest swelled. He'd taken Maggie's appearance at the airport as a personal attack, a sign that she couldn't throw off the violent things HYDRA had taught her. But Tony had played right into Zemo's hands.

As he instructed F.R.I.D.A.Y. to turn the information over to Ross, he lifted one hand to rub his jaw. He didn't understand Maggie, didn't even know her. But whatever was in her head, there was no doubt that by fighting at the airport she'd been trying to help Steve stop a dangerous man.

Tony pressed his eyes shut. Maggie was his sister, despite everything, and she'd been trying to do something good. He was going to give her a chance.

 

* * *

 

The Raft Prison, Atlantic Ocean

Maggie woke up in a narrow white tube. She blinked once, then realized what had woken her up: the tube she was lying in was beeping, bright white lights were flashing, and she registered a high wine of electricity.

When the tube started to warp and crumple before her very eyes, and sparks started flying, Maggie got the hell out of there. She used her legs to scoot backwards, gasping as a horrific shrieking sound filled the air, and then tumbled backwards out of the tube, collapsing onto a hard white floor.

As soon as she was free of the malfunctioning tube, Maggie registered the pain lighting up her body. With a startled cry she doubled over and pressed her forehead against the blessedly cool floor. She felt as if a giant had gripped her whole body and  _squeezed_. Her ribs were aching, her chest throbbed with pain, and every time she breathed in a sharp spike of agony radiated from her left wing mooring.

It took her a few moments to get a handle on the pain, categorising each ache and sting and convincing herself that she could manage them. With her head still pressed against the cool tile, she sorted through her memories from before she passed out. Tony; the battle at the airport; Bucky and Steve getting away; T'Challa tearing her wing off.

Bile rose in Maggie's throat at the fresh memory, and pain lanced through her spine.  _Vibranium, not Adamantium, is the strongest metal on earth._  She was lucky the violent removal of her wing hadn't broken her spine. Her wings were designed to link seamlessly with the metal throughout her body, and the act of damaging one would impact her whole system. She could definitely feel that it had cracked some ribs, the metal pulling her bones in ways they were never meant to bend.

Maggie fought back the tears prickling her eyes at the thought of her destroyed wing. If she went down that line of thinking she'd fall apart even more, and she needed to work out where she was.

Wincing, Maggie lifted her forehead off the ground and staggered to her feet. Her whole body protested the movement, bones creaking and her grazed skin stinging as it stretched. But she kept her balance, and lifted her eyes.

Maggie took one look at sterile metal walls and fluorescent lights and immediately wanted to drop to the ground again. Her heartrate doubled, and she had to take long breaths through her nose to keep from hyperventilating. This wasn't HYDRA, she reminded herself. It couldn't be. Just because she'd found herself in a lab once more didn't mean HYDRA had her.

The tube she'd woken up in was an MRI machine, now smoking and crumpled as it powered down. Maggie frowned at it – why would anyone think putting her, a woman with metal on her bones, in an MRI machine was a good idea? The rest of the small lab was lined with medical equipment and beds. There was a large mirror taking up most of the far wall, but Maggie would bet anything that it was a two-way mirror. She ran a wary eye over her reflection.

She looked terrible. Bruises and lacerations dotted her entire right side, and her hair was a dark rats nest around her pinched, exhausted-looking face. She was wearing blue scrubs over some kind of khaki long-sleeved shirt, and her feet were bare. The pearl pendant that Bucky had given her, which she'd worn under her battle uniform, was missing from her neck.

Maggie grimaced, and noted that she also felt unnaturally groggy – she'd been sedated, then. She supposed the reason she was awake at all was that whoever had sedated her had run into the problem that HYDRA often had – her body burned through any kind of drug much faster than they anticipated.

Maggie had just put together the strange outfit and the heavy security on the lab door and realised:  _prison_ , when the equipment in the room finally powered down, and the intermittent sparks stopped.

At that moment the lab door burst open, and Maggie found herself looking down the barrels of at least a dozen rifles.

"Stand down, Wyvern!" Came a harsh shout. "Back up and show us your hands!"

Her eyes widened and she jerked away, backpedalling until her back hit the lab wall and she cried out. Armed guards flooded into the room after her, fanning out so she was covered from all angles. Maggie tried to raise her hands, but then her chest shrieked with pain and she had to press a hand against her ribs, wincing.

The guards wore camouflage uniforms, green helmets and black vests that read  _U.S. Army._ Maggie eyed them nervously, lowering her centre of gravity. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

After the guards came a gaggle of scientists in lab coats, who shot her wary glances and then gathered around the smoking MRI machine, looking dismayed.

Anxiety spiked in Maggie's gut. The lab, the armed soldiers, the white coats, the pain echoing throughout her body – the list of triggers that reminded her of HYDRA kept growing, and Maggie suddenly felt like a five year old girl again, wide eyed and helpless. Her skin was flushed, feverish. She'd never been claustrophobic, but she suddenly felt as if the walls were closing in.

But the soldiers didn't come any closer, and the scientists were busy fussing over their broken machinery.

Seconds later a tall, silver-haired man in a black jacket walked into the room, with yet more armed guards. Maggie instantly recognized him as Secretary Thaddeus Ross, one of the driving forces behind the Accords, but she suddenly didn't care. Because a second after Ross walked in, he was followed by Tony Stark.

"She's got metal implants, you idiots," Tony was saying, glaring at Ross and then at the scientists in the room. "Why would you put her in an MRI machine?"

The breath whooshed from Maggie's lungs. Unbeknownst to her, Tony had just come from his conversation with Sam, anxious to see what condition they were keeping his sister in, when he heard the commotion from the labs and ran to see what was happening. All Maggie knew was that one moment she was trapped in a nightmare made real, and the next moment Tony was there. And now he was looking at her.

Maggie straightened, pulled her hand away from her ribs, and met her brother's gaze.

There was a long silence, filled only by the groaning of the destroyed equipment. Maggie could feel everyone staring at her, and she abruptly wished she had her wings – they'd always made her feel safer, like she could shield herself from anything, fly away at any moment.

In the silence, Maggie and Tony looked at each other. They took in each other's appearances, finding similarities and differences. Maggie noted that Tony had their dad's jaw. She ran her eyes over the ugly bruises on his face, glinting darkly under the fluorescent lights, and the sling on his arm. The injuries made her feel sick, especially as she knew who had put most of them there. His face was unreadable as he stared back at her, tense and heavy-browed. His mouth was pressed into a thin line.

Maggie kept her own face blank. It was her instinct whenever it came to people observing her.

Finally, after working his jaw for a few moments, Tony turned to Ross, who had been angrily gesturing at the scientists. Maggie relaxed a little, relieved she was no longer being stared at.

"Let me take her with me."

Ross's face hardened as he turned to Tony. Maggie blinked. "Stark, this isn't-"

"Clearly you don't have the resources to scan her," Tony argued back, sounding surprisingly calm. "I'm going back to the compound where that will be possible. It's just as secure as here, and I can personally guarantee she won't escape."

Maggie watched silently as Ross and Tony argued, ignoring her pounding heartbeat.

"Oh you guarantee, do you?" taunted Ross, sneering. "And this doesn't have anything to do with wanting to make sure that your baby sister gets off scot-free-"

"She's hardly getting off scot-free if she's surrounded by Avengers on the most secure compound on earth. You  _know_ we've got the resources. Besides, I've got this." Tony pulled what looked like a metal bracelet out of his pocket, stepped across the lab toward Maggie and snapped it around her wrist. She saw it coming, but she was so surprised that he was willing to come near her that she didn't think to try to stop him.

As Tony backed away she lifted her arm and peered at the bracelet. The metal whirred and tightened around her arm – not enough to be uncomfortable, but enough that Maggie knew she wouldn't be able to get it off. A glowing green LED light flickered into life on the top of the bracelet. She glared at it, and then up at Tony. He wasn't looking at her.

"What's that do?" Ross asked in a milder voice, running a hand across his moustache. He gestured to the fussing scientists and they cleared out of the lab, leaving their broken equipment behind.

"Think of it as a high-tech LoJack," Tony explained, cocking his head. "It's connected to – well,  _something_ on me. If she goes more than three hundred feet away from me, the band will emit a painless, low-voltage electric current that freezes up muscles, even those of the super-soldier variety." Tony still wouldn't look at Maggie as he spoke, so he couldn't see her glare deepen.

Ross, however, seemed mollified. "And what happens if she attacks you?"

"It activates if my vitals flatline. Or if anyone attempts to remove it. But I'm sure it won't come to that." Tony grinned, and clapped his hands together. "Right! We'll be off then, so long, give me a call if you need me." Tony tipped his head at Maggie in a gesture that suggested she follow, and then walked out of the room.

Maggie hesitated for a long moment, eyeing the armed soldiers throughout the room, and Ross's unamused glare. Would it be easier to stay here, in this strange prison, instead of being imprisoned by her own brother? One option seemed a lot less painful than the other.

She glanced down at the metal bracelet circling her wrist, then at the molten mess of the MRI machine. She gritted her teeth.

_Best go with the harder choice._

Taking a deep breath – and wincing as the movement pulled at her cracked ribs – Maggie walked out after her brother.

On her way past Ross, the Secretary of State reached out and gripped her upper arm. He didn't have the strength to stop her, but she stopped anyway, staring resolutely ahead.

"This isn't freedom,  _Wyvern_ ," he hissed. "You're a mass murderer, and you'll face justice for that. As will Barnes, when we get him."

Maggie refused to look at him. His fingers dug harshly into her arm, but she ignored the pain.

"You're a moron," she told Ross, shrugged out of his grip, and stepped out of the lab.

 

Maggie followed Tony through the black corridors of the prison, through reinforced metal doors that slid open as he approached, and past more armed soldiers. Tony didn't look back at her once, but she was sure he could hear her bare feet padding along behind him. Her heels made a soft  _clink_ sound every time they hit the floor. Maggie eyed each soldier they passed warily, but no one attempted to stop her. Tony was heading steadily upwards.

With no acknowledgment from Tony, Maggie found herself inspecting the infrastructure of the prison: air ducts, wiring, the layout of the corridors. It was like no facility she'd ever been in, a maze of sturdy walls and fluorescent lights. Flash memories flickered through the back of her mind, of a warren of rock corridors tunnelling through an island in Québec. Maggie shook her head to clear away the images – those dark corridors were blown to pieces, and she'd never have to face them again. She had Tony to thank for that.

She glanced up at the back of her brother's head. As she did, she noticed that the ground was ever so slightly unsteady beneath her feet. At first Maggie thought it was in her head, a result of her injury and sedation, but the longer they walked, the more certain she was that it was the prison that was moving. She frowned.

Finally, they walked into a wide room with a Stark Industries helicopter parked on a landing pad in the middle. It started powering up as soon as Tony appeared.

Maggie's eyes widened incrementally, but she kept following five paces behind.

"Stark!" came Ross's voice, and Maggie scowled when she realised the Secretary of State had followed them up. She didn't look back. "Did Wilson give you anything on Rogers?"

"Nope, told me to go to hell," Tony shot over his shoulder. "I'm going back to the compound instead, but you can call me anytime." He climbed into the helicopter, the downdraft of the rotors ruffling his hair, and looked back at Ross. "I'll put you on hold, I like to watch the line blink."

Maggie could only imagine the pleasant look Ross shot at Tony for that jab. She didn't look, because it was clear it was her turn to board the helicopter. Wincing as her ribs protested, she grabbed the handhold and climbed in, scooting to sit in the seat furthest from Tony, opposite him in the cockpit. There was no one in the front of the helicopter – it was fully automated, then.

Tony grinned at Ross and nodded as the helicopter door slid shut. Maggie's heartrate was speeding up again, and she gripped her seat's armrests with white knuckles. There was a clanking sound from above the helicopter, and she glanced out of the window to see the roof opening up - two enormous metal doors swung outwards on hydraulic lifts, releasing a gust of rain into the room below. The helicopter started rising, and something in Maggie's gut tightened.

Maggie kept staring out the window as they took off, at first to avoid the inevitable confrontation with Tony, but then because she got a good look at the prison as they flew away, and… was it  _floating?_

Maggie craned her neck, staring at the enormous black structure as it started to sink into the ocean. Her heart skipped a beat – this was no new creation. The U.S. Government had clearly been anticipating locking up enhanced people for years.

A pang of guilt hit Maggie as she realized that the others captured at the airport must still be in that sinking black box: Scott, Wanda, Clint, and Sam. She hadn't thought about them since she woke up, too caught up in her panic and then thoughts about her brother. They were still stuck there, and she was being transferred to what was probably another prison, albeit a much nicer one. She frowned as the prison sank out of sight, leaving churning white water in its wake.

"Grim prospect, huh."

Maggie flinched at Tony's voice, and her eyes flicked toward him. Tony's elbows rested on his knees, and he watched her from under a furrowed brow, his gaze unreadable. Maggie stilled, looking back at him silently.

It was just the two of them now.

After a long silence, Tony spoke: "Do you know who you are?"

Maggie didn't break their eye contact. "Yes."

"Do you know who  _I_ am?"

There was a longer pause.

"Yes."

There was another long silence, this one almost awkward. So many unsaid things crackled between them. Maggie felt small.

Eventually, Tony sighed and leaned back in his seat. "I gotta say, when we were kids it would have never occurred to me that  _I_ would be the one bailing  _you_ out of jail."

Maggie laughed, and then her hand darted to her mouth, surprised. But the simple sound had eased the tension in the helicopter. She glanced up at Tony and saw that his face was softer, more open. She swallowed.

"Are you alright?" she blurted out. She couldn't keep her mind off the bruises on his face and the sling on his arm, and she didn't miss the way he winced whenever he moved.

It was Tony's turn to blink at her in surprise. He glanced down at his sling, as if he'd forgotten it was there. "I – yeah, I'm…" he glanced back up at her, his brow pinched. "I'm fine." He cocked his head, as if reassessing her, and Maggie shrank a little under his gaze. "You?"

Maggie ran another mental catalogue: cracked ribs, bruises and lacerations, ligament damage, blood loss. She shrugged carefully, ignoring the way her chest twinged. "I'll live."

"Good, good," Tony muttered, still watching her. "Living is good." After another beat, he sighed and reached up to the clip on his sling, unfastening it and scrunching the sling into a ball. He winced, clutching his wrist, and then started messing around with his watch. Maggie's brow furrowed as she watched him.

"Okay," Tony muttered, pressing buttons on his watch. "Siberia, right?"

Maggie didn't freeze, but he could clearly sense her sudden panic from across the cockpit. "Relax, Wilson told me." His eyes flicked back up to hers. "I know Barnes was set up, and I know Steve was telling the truth at the airport. The doctor was an impostor, a guy called Helmut Zemo. If he's stirring up trouble in Siberia, they'll need backup."

Maggie's eyes grew steadily rounder as he spoke. "It's a little worse than trouble," she murmured.

"Yeah, Wilson told me. Winter Soldier Program, huh?"

Maggie's shoulders hunched – that was far too close to things she wasn't ready to talk about yet. Tony saw her reaction and changed the subject.

"Okay, you're going to need this-" he tossed something at her, and Maggie caught it instinctively in one hand. She flipped it around to reveal… a mask? It looked like an Iron Man mask, with glass slits for eyes and a stern mouth line, but it was a pale grey and felt like some kind of synthetic polymer. Maggie looked from the mask to Tony, cocking an eyebrow.

He gestured for her to put it on, but she didn't move. No way was she putting on a strange mask just because he'd told her to, he'd already given her one piece of jewellery she didn't want.

Tony sighed, and exasperatedly explained: "It's a protective suit. I built it in case I ever needed to airlift someone long distance. It can't take a beating like my suit can, and it's got no firepower, but it'll get you to Siberia. Okay?"

Maggie raised both eyebrows now, glancing at the mask in her hands. "Okay."

She pressed the mask to her face. With a pneumatic hiss, the mask shivered and expanded, slipping over the back of her head, down her neck, and flowing to cover her body. She shuddered at the feeling – it was like being encased in plastic.

Once the suit wrapped over her bare feet and hissed once more, Maggie lifted her hands and blinked at them through the mask eyeholes. Her whole body was covered in the grey polymer. It was lightweight, but felt sturdy enough. The material supported her aching ribs, and Maggie found she could move a little easier.

"Welcome aboard, Ms Stark," said a female voice with an Irish accent in her ear. Maggie flinched, both at the voice and at the name, then glanced back up at Tony.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y. runs the suit, so you don't need to do any driving," Tony said, and Maggie swore she saw the ghost of a smirk on his lips. "The suit's synced to mine, so it'll be a follow-the-leader kind of deal."

Maggie cocked her head from side to side, feeling the remarkably flexible polymer stretch and retract. "This is so cool," she muttered, and wiggled her fingers.

Tony did smirk that time. "Alright, let's get this show on the road." He pressed his index finger into a nondescript silver button on the console next to him, and Maggie watched wide-eyed as red and gold metal suddenly sprang up around him, slotting over his arms and shoulders. A door slid open behind him and the suit fully cocooned his body, finishing with the distinctive gold mask and glowing eye slits. A second later he fell backward, slipping out of the helicopter and dropping into the sky below.

For a second or two Maggie stared after him, blinking, but then her suit whirred into action and before she understood what was happening she was zooming out the helicopter door as well.

Maggie was no stranger to flying, but the feeling of dropping into open air in nothing but a plastic suit made her heart leap into her mouth. She tried to flail her limbs to balance herself, but the polymer suit went rigid against her movements. Rain pelted against her facemask. She spotted the red and gold figure of Iron Man a hundred feet below, and with a blast of repulsors he was off, jetting across the sky. Maggie yelped as her suit echoed his movements, manoeuvring her limbs against her will and sending her rocketing after her brother. She took a second to be grateful that the suit stayed within three hundred feet of Tony at all times, so the metal bracelet on her wrist didn't go off.

It took her a few minutes to get used to the unsettling feeling of being a sack of meat carted around by an A.I.-operated suit, but once she did she was able to process what exactly had just happened. She eyed the gleaming figure of her brother, cutting through the howling wind and rain.

She could hear Tony breathing, so she assumed there was a comm linkup between the suits. "You're breaking the law," she said. It was kind of a question, but not really.

The Iron Man suit didn't falter, brushing over the top of a dense storm cloud. "This might not surprise you, but that's not exactly a new concept for me."

 _Nor me_ , Maggie thought wryly. She wasn't fooled by Tony's casual tone – she'd seen how hard he fought for the Accords at the airport – but if he didn't want to talk about it, she wouldn't push. There were so many unsaid things between them, it seemed silly to argue over semantics.

They fell into silence again, and Maggie's thoughts turned to the last time she'd been in the sky. Her back ached once more at the memory of T'Challa tearing her left wing away, and she remembered the sickening feeling of falling. She wondered if this was how Bucky felt when he remembered his fall from the train in 1945 – cold and sweaty, with a sinking sensation in his gut as if he was still falling.

Maggie didn't think T'Challa had meant to hurt her – he'd been pissed, sure, but she could usually tell when an opponent was trying to kill her or maim her, and T'Challa hadn't been  _that_ angry. She remembered the way he had stared at her, frozen in horror, as she screamed.

As she turned over her memories of feeling like her body was being torn apart, Maggie abruptly recalled a small detail that her agonized, shocked mind had only just noticed.

Suddenly panicking, Maggie glanced back at her brother and blurted out: "Is Rhodey okay?"

Tony actually looked over his shoulder at that, even though there was nothing to see but the grey polymer suit. "Caught that, did you?" His voice was terse, and Maggie's stomach lurched. "He's alive. Probably going to have some form of paralysis."

Maggie's heart plummeted to the harsh ocean miles below.  _Rhodey,_ who had stuck by her brother for his entire adult life. Rhodey who had promised to take her flying. Maggie felt tears welling behind her eyes, and she remembered the way Rhodey's armour had glinted as he fell out of the sky.

She knew she hadn't been solely responsible for the fight at the airport, but… she'd been fighting against Rhodey, and he'd gotten hurt. She'd thought her days of hurting people were over. A bitter taste filled her mouth when she realised that though they'd both gotten hurt, she had the super soldier serum to help her bounce back. Rhodey was all human, through and through, and he'd paid the price.

After another few minutes, Tony said: "You called him Rhodey." There was a funny note in his voice.

"What?"

"Rhodey. Not Rhodes."

Maggie blinked through her tears.  _Oh._ She opened and closed her mouth a few times before she managed to speak. "Well," she choked out, "roads are supposed to be named after people, not the other way around." It was a silly thing to say, childish, but it was the only thing she could think of.

Tony laughed, and it sounded like there might be tears in his eyes too.

Maggie followed her brother through the sky, her heart pounding as the landscape below grew colder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have been waiting a long time for this, so I hope it was worth the wait! I know they haven't said a lot to each other here, but keep in mind they're on the clock.


	42. Chapter 42

 

HYDRA Facility, Siberia

When they landed outside the facility, F.R.I.D.A.Y. gave Maggie control over her limbs again. Maggie fumbled the mask of her suit back, and the frozen wind took her breath away.

The wastelands of Siberia felt like a half-forgotten dream coming to life around her. The ground was nothing but black rock and white snow. The wind blew ice crystals off the ground and into Maggie's face, howling around her skin and hair. The glimpses she caught of metal hatches and doors in the ground resonated with dark memories.

The last time she'd stood in this rocky wasteland she was fifteen, her mind blank and her hands stained with blood.

_Verre, transmission, affam_ _é-_

Maggie shivered and pushed away the memories. The Project Leader was gone, his blood dried up in the rock below. This wasn't about him.

Narrowing her eyes, Maggie assessed the situation – the bunker doors were cracked open, and the wind howled in the empty space beyond. There was a snowmobile parked a few feet away –  _Zemo_ , Maggie thought with a flash of anger – and the Quinjet rested just beside it.

Tony was trying to scan the base, but if the irritated tilt of his head was anything to go by, he wasn't having much luck. "Well this place is a cliché evil lair," he grumbled, and Maggie smiled despite herself.

"Give me a second," she called, and jogged toward the Quinjet. Her body ached at the movements, but she pushed through the pain – her body needed time to heal, but she'd have to schedule that for later. For now, the serum would keep her upright.

Maggie hustled up the jet's ramp and looked around, until her eyes focused on a panel in the wall marked  _Romanoff_. She opened it and smiled at the rack of weapons that slid out.

A few seconds later, Tony appeared at the bottom of the Quinjet ramp. "C'mon, what're you doing? Looking for an inflight meal?" Maggie reappeared at the top of the ramp, and his eyes widened inside his helmet at the sight of her clutching a very large gun.

"Something like that," Maggie replied, striding down the ramp and joining him in the snow. She felt a bit better now – the weapon didn't exactly make her feel comfortable, but now she had a way of fighting back. Her body still bloomed with pain whenever she moved, and she felt impossibly small without her wings, but with the weapon she was better able to hide the weakness she felt. She was more used to smaller weapons, weapons she could strap across her body while flying, but she'd been trained in just about everything.

She and Tony approached the metal doors of the facility together, his metal boots crunching in the snow and her padded polymer ones silently padding along beside him.

Every step toward the darkness waiting behind the doors made Maggie's throat constrict. Tony went in first, and Maggie held her breath as she followed. Concrete walls and heavy metal doors met them, and Maggie's fingers tightened on her gun. She supposed she should put the synthetic suit's helmet back up, but the thought of covering her face and trapping herself inside the suit made her skin prickle. The last time she'd come here she'd been faceless.

Tony wasn't oblivious to the haunted look on her face, or the way her fingers shifted nervously on her weapon. "You've been here before," he noted.

Maggie swallowed. "Twice."

He wisely didn't ask what for.

They paced further into the base, and Maggie felt the icy calm of the Wyvern slip over her mind. Normally she'd fight it, but anything was better than the snowstorm of fear and memories clouding her mind. She lifted her gun and watched Tony's back, glancing down side-corridors as her feet paced silently over the concrete floor.

They came up against the cage elevator, and Tony cocked his head at it. Maggie had a flash-memory of standing in that very same elevator, surrounded by men taller and angrier than her.

"I'm not going in the murder elevator," Tony decided, his helmeted voice loud, and he turned left. Maggie tried to keep her breath of relief quiet, but she didn't think she managed it.

"Bet you wish you were back in the slammer about now," Tony said conversationally, as he lifted one glowing gauntlet to light the way down a set of stairs.

A frown quirked Maggie's brow, but not at the comment – all of her tactical training was telling her to  _maintain silence_ at this moment, but it didn't seem that Tony cared much about tactical training or the element of surprise. Then again, they were here looking for a fight, so she supposed it didn't matter.

"Not really," she muttered, stepping smoothly around him to make sure the upcoming corridor was clear. "Underground bunkers aren't great, but they're a step up from underwater prisons."

"That's fair." His tone was light, but Maggie could hear a hard undercurrent beneath it. She wasn't sure how to read it – did Tony regret sending his team members to that place?

She shook off the thoughts and focused on the mission. She and Tony worked well together, him lighting the way and her watching their backs, gun aloft. Tony was loud and bright, an obvious target; Maggie didn't like that but she used it to her advantage, sticking to the shadows and keeping her footsteps light. If anyone attacked Tony they wouldn't see her coming.

They came up against a short drop, leading to a set of closed metal doors. Tony paused, muttered "parkour!" and then hopped off the ledge, landing with a clang.

Maggie rolled her eyes, but jumped down after him. She instantly regretted it when her cracked ribs shrieked, sending a bolt of pain up her spine and into the base of her neck. She winced, but didn't cry out.

Tony wedged his gloves into the gap between the doors and  _pulled_ , the metal groaning under the strength of his armor. Maggie, covering the route they'd come down, raised an eyebrow. That suit was  _cool._

The doors slammed open, and Tony paused. Maggie glanced over her shoulder to see what the hold up was, and –  _oh._

She noticed the colourful shield first, and then her eyes tracked to the figures behind it. Steve's face, eyes wide and wary, and Bucky a dark, glinting shadow over his shoulder, with his gun trained on Iron Man. They were crouched on the far stairs.

Maggie let her eyes close for a brief second.  _They made it, they're safe_. She opened her eyes again when Tony started walking forward, his helmet retracting. Steve stepped out of the shadows of the stairs, shield still raised, and Bucky kept his gun trained on Tony.

Maggie moved into the light and saw the exact moment Steve and Bucky noticed her behind Iron Man. Steve's eyes widened even further, darting between she and Tony. Bucky's gun dipped and she felt his confusion and concern radiate across the space between them like a physical force.

Maggie lowered her gun and tried to communicate  _it's okay, we're here to help_ with her eyes, but Tony was still walking forward, and Bucky wasn't going to leave Steve unprotected.

"You seem a little defensive," Tony said, cocking his head.

Steve nodded. "It's been a long day."

Tony's attention flicked up to Bucky, still rigid on the stairs, and he called "at ease, soldier, I'm not currently after you."

Maggie's face twisted.  _Currently._

"Then why are you here?" Steve shot back.

Tony shrugged. "Could be your story's not so crazy. Maybe. Ross has no idea we're here," he said, his head tilting back at Maggie. "I'd like to keep it that way." He sighed and leaned against a nearby concrete pillar. "Otherwise I've gotta arrest myself."

Maggie couldn't help another smile despite the situation – just being near Tony, hearing his voice, was a joy she never thought she could have. But she kept back, and kept silent. This was for Tony and Steve to hash out, since they were the ones with the problem.

Maggie could see that remarkable look of trust filtering into Steve's expression. "Well that sounds like a lot of paperwork."

Tony huffed a laugh, and some of the tension across Maggie's shoulders eased at the semi-truce. Sure enough, Steve lowered his shield.

"It's good to see you, Tony."

"You too, Cap." Tony's head swivelled back to Bucky, and he made a disgusted sound. "Manchurian Candidate, you're killin' me. There's a truce here, you can drop-"

Steve raised a hand to Bucky, and Bucky finally lowered his gun. As he did his eyes flickered to Maggie, questioning. Relieved that people weren't about to start punching each other again, Maggie stepped out of the doorway and approached the three men, eyes fixed on Bucky. She could see he was relieved she was okay, and concerned about her appearance in this facility. She smiled at him, taking in his exhausted-looking features and his rigid posture. At her smile Bucky relaxed and leaned against the wall, his blue-grey eyes warming.

"Did you guys just communicate telepathically?" came Tony's voice, and Maggie glanced at her brother. He was looking back and forth between she and Bucky, eyebrows raised. "I feel like you guys just communicated telepathically."

She replied with an enigmatic smirk.

Tony rolled his eyes. "So you two are together, then."

The blood drained from Maggie's face, but then Tony clarified: "Have been together." He waved his hand between them, his expression cagey. "Ever since… y'know."

 _Oh._ "Yes," she said, taking a breath of relief as Tony's face twisted. "We've been with each other since HYDRA." It wasn't that she and Bucky were going out of their way to  _hide_ their relationship, it was just… very complicated right now. Maggie met Bucky's eyes and saw similar relief and uncertainty in his eyes.

Tony, after taking a moment to adjust to the knowledge that his sister had been on the run with the Winter Soldier since the events of D.C., awkwardly gestured to Maggie as he looked back at Steve. "We're your backup."

Steve nodded once, before his eyes flickered to Maggie. "You're okay?" His voice was steady, but Maggie knew he was thinking about her screams over the commlink.

She shrugged and ignored the corresponding twinge in her spine. "I feel great."

No one present believed her, but her assurance was enough for Steve. "Let's keep moving," he said, back in Captain mode, and took point up the stairs. Tony followed, helmet flipping back over his face.

Maggie and Bucky took the rear, their bodies shifting back into combat mode. They kept shooting looks at each other out of the corners of their eyes as they moved.

Maggie nodded at Bucky's gun. "You steal that from the Widow too?" she asked.

Bucky smirked, and shot an approving glance at her gun. Maggie wished she could reach out and touch him, just a fleeting brush against his skin to make sure he was really there, but this wasn't the right audience for that. Physical comfort would have to wait.

Bucky shot her a warm look, and she knew he was thinking the same thing.

"What are you wearing?" he muttered, quirking a brow at the pale grey suit as he swung past her to clear a room full of boxes.

Maggie bit back a teasing, flirty remark and focused on eyeing the path behind them. "A synthetic protective suit. Under that, prison clothes."

She hadn't intended it, but the comment made tension crackle between the three men ahead of her. They fell silent again.  _Oops._

It felt odd, walking through the dusty facility with Bucky, Steve and Tony. Like a strange dream filled with characters from her waking life, set in one of her old nightmares. She didn't let the eerie feeling distract her, though, and she focused on watching her small team's flank. They paced through the abandoned facility, leaving footprints in the dust and catching glimpses of their reflections in shattered windows.

With her brother's gleaming armor, Steve's shield, and Bucky's warm, solid presence beside her, Maggie felt a small bud of hope that they could take on whatever was waiting for them.

She was the last to enter the final, silo-like chamber, pacing backwards as she kept her gun trained on the corridors behind them. She thought she saw a flash of black and silver, and her brow furrowed, but-

"I've got heat signatures," Tony said, and Maggie's heart pounded.

"How many?" asked Steve. Maggie followed him into the room, dismissing whatever she'd seen as a broken reflection, or some long-gone flash memory.

"Uh… one."

Maggie turned around, and her jaw clenched at the huge, dark space beyond. As she peered into the darkness there was a whir of electricity and the lights powered on. Four glass cryo-chambers glowed yellow, illuminating the room and the memory suppression chair in the centre.

Maggie's fingers tightened on her gun, and the breath left her chest in a rush. She thought she'd been ready – she remembered this space, remembered being ordered to sit in that exact chair after beating the Soldier to a pulp in the snow. But knowing the chair was going to be there didn't stop her entire body locking up with fear at the sight of the metal contraption. She knew what it felt like to have those overhead lights glaring into her eyes, she knew the exact sound those metal plates made when they descended on her face, sparking and crackling. She knew the hard bite of the chair and the way the restraints dug into her skin.

She knew what it felt like to know a face, to be just on the edge of  _feeling_ , only to have it wiped away. Her eyes flicked to Tony, and her heartbeat roared in her ears.

Bucky had also seen the chair, if the rigid line of his shoulders was anything to go by. He leaned into Maggie's space for a moment, and the warm solidness of him eased her instinctive fear a little.

Strangely, it was the reactions of the other two members of their small team that made her feel safer. Steve's eyes darted toward Bucky and Maggie as soon as he noticed the chair, taking in their anxious reactions. His jaw tightened and his eyes softened, just for a moment, and Maggie remembered that he would do anything to protect Bucky, and she was pretty sure he'd protect her as well.

Tony was inscrutable in his armored mask, but she could feel his gaze on her as she breathed through her panic, just for a moment. When his glowing eye slits turned back to the larger room, Maggie heard the faint whir of his gauntlet closing into a fist.

Steve paced forward, followed by the rest of them, but he pulled up short as a voice echoed:

"If it's any comfort, they died in their sleep."

Maggie flinched, and her eyes darted to the computers linked to the cryo-chambers. Flat lines tracked across each screen.

Steve started walking again, he and Tony circling around to the right of the memory suppression chair. Their footsteps were loud in the silent space. Bucky went left, his body rigid. Who knew how many times he'd been wiped here.

As Maggie stepped closer she saw the bullet holes in the cryo-chambers, and the cold, lifeless faces within, and her skin prickled.  _He came all this way to kill them?_

As if reading her thoughts, the man spoke over the intercom again: "Did you really think I wanted more of you?"

Maggie bristled, turning on the spot as if she could find the disembodied voice if she looked hard enough.  _Zemo_ , that was what Tony had said his name was.

Bucky got agitated, fidgeting with his gun and glancing around. "What the hell?" he whispered.

Maggie examined the dead faces of the Winter Soldiers. She'd never met them, had only ever had the idea of them hanging over her. But the bullet holes in their foreheads disturbed her more than many other grisly scenes she'd witnessed.  _Why?_

"I'm grateful to them, though," Zemo continued. "They brought you here."

At the far end of the room, a screen lifted to reveal the man who must have been Zemo – an unassuming face, dark hair and dark clothes. Everyone in the room reacted. Bucky and Maggie's guns swung up and Tony aimed a missile, but Steve got there first. His shield ricocheted off some kind of protective shell and bounced back into his outstretched hand.

"Please, Captain," Zemo tutted, as more lights burst into life around the room, revealing that he was in some kind of missile bunker. Maggie flinched and took a few steps back, keeping her gun trained on him. "The Soviets built this chamber to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets."

The condescending tone in his voice made Maggie bristle. This was the man who'd hurt Bucky,  _used_ Bucky, and then brought them here, to the seat of some of her worst nightmares. To what,  _taunt_ them? She didn't understand his plan, but she wanted him to pay.

At the same time, she was terrified. If Zemo knew Bucky's trigger words he might know hers as well. She took a deep breath in through her nose and out her mouth.

"I'm betting I could beat that," Tony called, as they all circled around the memory suppression chair toward Zemo's bunker.

"Oh I'm sure you could, Mr Stark. Given time. But then you'd never know why you came."

Maggie stayed a few steps behind Bucky, eyeing each cryo-chamber to double check that the Winter Soldier inside was dead. She might be confused about why they'd died, but she wasn't about to grieve for them.

"You killed innocent people in Vienna just to bring us here?" Steve stepped right up to the glass, his face set in hard lines.

When Zemo spoke again, it was a whisper: "I've thought about nothing else for over a year." Maggie took a moment to stare at his face – his eyes were focused, bright with the glint of obsession. And… triumph? He didn't break eye contact with Steve for a second. "I studied you. I followed you. But now that you're standing here, I just realised… there's a bit of green in the blue of your eyes." He gave a soft laugh. "How nice to find a flaw."

Maggie exchanged a quick glance with Bucky, and saw the same unease in his eyes that was buzzing up and down her spine.

"You're Sokovian," Steve noted. "Is that what this is about?"

"Sokovia was a failed state long before you blew it to hell," Zemo said, eyes still trained on Steve's face. "No. I am here because I made a promise." There was a flicker of grief, then, and Maggie felt a sickening swooping feeling in her stomach.

"You lost someone," Steve realised.

There was an angry silence, until: "I lost  _everyone_ ," Zemo whispered, his voice hoarse. "And so will you."

Maggie's heart pounded – this was  _personal_ , and no one was closer to Steve than Bucky and her brother, the two people she loved most in the world. Her whole body tingled, ready to leap to save them at a moment's notice. Would it be a bomb? A targeting system? Chemical weapons?

Zemo reached down to a control panel and pressed a button. By Steve's side a computer screen flickered into life, reading ' _16_   _Декабрь_ [ _December_ ]  _1991'_. Maggie frowned at it.  _What_ –

"An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again," the Sokovian rasped. "But one which crumbles from within?" Steve, now hovering by the computer screen, glanced back at Zemo. "That's dead. Forever."

Tony's helmet flicked down and he moved to stand by Steve's side in front of the screen. Bucky was behind the computer, his gun trained on Zemo. Maggie hung back a little, wary, but she could see the screen clearly. The date switched to black and white footage of a road, there was no location marker but–

It was as if ice shot through Maggie's veins, sapping the life from her limbs and leaving her frozen, helpless. That road, that date… Her throat constricted, nearly cutting off her air supply, and she lifted her hand to her mouth as if to hold back a secret. Her eyes flicked to Bucky.

As if in slow motion, she saw Tony realise what he was seeing. He glanced down at the screen and frowned, before looking up at Steve for a second.

"I know that road," he murmured, voice heavy with dread. He looked back up at Zemo and shouted "what is this?"

Zemo didn't respond, but his eyes did flash toward Maggie. She could see a numbness in him that she recognised in herself, but without any of the love remaining. This moment was all he had left, she realised. He didn't care about anything else. He certainly didn't care about her.

A faint  _crunch_ came from the screen as a car collided with a tree, bonnet crumpling on impact. Maggie hiccupped a breath, recalling the way the world had lurched around her, followed by the ringing in her head and the fire flickering beyond her closed eyes.

Tony, his face already haggard with grief and recognition, turned to Maggie. She met his dark eyes, but she could only show him her fear. Her right hand was still pressed against her trembling mouth and her gun dangled, forgotten, in her other hand.

Tony looked back at the screen.

She knew it was coming, but the sight of the black motorcycle with its metal-armed driver made her shudder.

Steve glanced at Tony.

Bucky had heard the faint sounds of glass shattering and engines rumbling, and by now he knew what they were watching. His eyes slowly lifted – first to Tony, then Steve, and then across to Maggie. Maggie met his eyes for a brief second, terrified and frozen, before she forced her eyes back to the screen. If Tony had to watch this, then she had to as well.

Maggie watched her father fall out of the crumpled car and crawl across the gravel. His movements were sluggish, and Maggie's heart squeezed, constricting her chest.

The Winter Soldier appeared like a black and silver omen. He was returning from his motorbike –  _he'd just taken the serum from the trunk,_ Maggie realised.

"Help my daughter. My wife," dad mumbled. "Please… help."

The Soldier seized his white hair, metal fist raised, and the first tears spilled down Maggie's cheeks.

"Sergeant Barnes?" dad breathed, and she could see the whites of his eyes. She didn't remember this part, she'd still been stunned from the crash.

Then: "Howard!" came a woman's voice. Maggie's heart clenched.  _Mom._ She must have been so scared.

Slowly, steadily, Tony's head swiveled to look across at Bucky. Lowering his gun, Bucky met Tony's eyes, and after a brief second Tony glanced once more at Maggie. She couldn't look away from the video, from her father's last moments. Tony took in the tears tracking down her cheeks, the hand still pressed to her mouth, and followed her eyes back to the screen.

The Soldier's metal fist struck dad's face – once, twice – and Maggie felt the blows as if they were raining down on her instead. She saw Tony's eyes squeeze shut, and he shuddered.

"Howard!" Mom cried again, as the Soldier let dad slump to the ground. "Maggie, say something!"

The words echoed in Maggie's lightning-torn memories. She'd woken up at that point, small and hurting and so, so, scared. She felt sick. She thought she'd left the worst day of her life behind her but here it was, playing out again before her eyes. And  _Tony_ -

She could hear Tony's harsh breathing as the Soldier heaved dad back into the driver's seat, placing his head on the wheel. They couldn't see much from the camera angle, but Maggie remembered:  _red where his face should be, eyes open and staring_.

As if he had all the time in the world, the Winter Soldier paced around the car to the passenger side door. His footsteps, crunching in the gravel, were audible through the computer speakers.

Mom made a shuddering, gasping noise when the Soldier placed his flesh hand around her throat, and Maggie's gun fell from her numb fingers. No one turned around at the clatter. The camera caught the Soldier's face over the top of the car: impassive. Blank.

Tony's face wasn't blank.

Then, a child's voice: "Dad? Mom?"

Maggie was startled at how young she sounded. Tony glanced back at her, just for a second. But he wasn't really seeing her, she realised. He was seeing that little girl, dark haired and inquisitive, without a clue of what was happening to her.

"Stop it!" came young Maggie's high voice, trembling with alarm.

 _Too late,_ Maggie thought.  _Far too late._

The Winter Soldier pulled his hand away from mom's lifeless throat and stepped toward Maggie's door. Maggie knew what was about to happen, but even she sucked in a breath when the left-hand passenger door swung open and the five-year old Maggie fell out with a cry. She was so  _small_ , streaked with blood and tears, with an obvious limp in her step as she scrabbled to her feet and ran for the road.

The Soldier caught her easily.

"No!" came her young, high scream, as the Soldier seized her upper arm and dragged her back to the car. The young Maggie looked up at his face. "Let me go!"

Her feet were slipping all over the place, but the young girl in the black-and-white footage started punching the Soldier with her free fist, landing blows against his middle that he would have barely felt. Maggie felt Steve's pained gaze flick to her face, just for a moment, before he looked back at the screen.

The Soldier ignored Maggie as he got the dead girl from his bike and put her in Maggie's place. When he stepped away from the car they could see that Maggie had stilled, her face blank with shock. She slumped in the Soldier's grip, and her sobs carried crystal-clear over the speakers.

The Soldier sloshed firestarter fluid over the car, and the child in his grip got more distressed. "Stop! Please, stop!"

Maggie felt her heart shattering. She wondered if she deserved a heart.

Then there was a whoosh of flames and a wail, and the Soldier dragged Maggie toward the camera. She kept fighting his grip, trying to get back to her parents. Her face was turned away from the camera.

The Soldier's face was clear. He lifted the gun in his metal hand, fired, and the footage went dark.

The silence that followed the video was deafening. Maggie's cheeks were soaked in tears, and the hand pressed against her mouth was white with pressure. She felt as if someone had reached into her brain and pulled out her worst nightmare. Her skin was numb and her heart thundered in her ears, racing at the horrific memories and the knowledge of the things that were breaking around her.

Tony stared down at the blank screen. Steve watched Tony, his eyes bright and his chest heaving. Maggie looked at Bucky, and he met her gaze with turmoil-filled blue grey eyes. The memory of that night echoed between them.

Bucky was afraid. Not just of the video, or of Tony, but of what the video might have done to Maggie. She could see it in his eyes, though he tried to hide it: he was afraid he was going to lose her.

 _You're my mission_ , the Soldier had said, after the camera was gone.

Maggie remembered her powerless fury.  _You're my mission now._

They'd turned those words into remembrance, then support, then forgiveness. They'd turned those words into love.

Maggie let her hand fall away from her mouth, and she showed Bucky with her eyes that she had already forgiven him for this. The guilt and self-loathing that wrenched his face made her heart break even more.

The only warning they had was a short, sharp intake of breath from Tony before he whipped around to Bucky, his whole face alight with rage.

Bucky jerked backwards, blinking away tears, and Steve caught Tony by his metal elbow. "Tony!" he called, low and pleading.

Maggie didn't take in any of it – the instant Tony went for Bucky with that snarl on his face she moved before she knew what she was doing, appearing between them with her arms spread protectively.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me!


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I survived a typhoon, guys! It was noisy but mostly I was pretty bored, had a lot of tea, got some writing done.
> 
> Thank you to ff.net user RochuRobalo for some edits to the Spanish translations in Chapters 23 & 24, it's much appreciated, along with your lovely comments! And thank you to thenumbertwentyseven, who definitely deserves credit for always hyping me up for my own story and giving me some good ideas along the way! Also for wonderful reviews that never fail to make me smile :)

 

 

Tony's eyes went wide, and he stared at Maggie for what felt like an eternity. There was grief, so much grief in his dark eyes. But then he took in the way she was standing, placing herself between him and their parents' murderer, her own kidnapper, and the sharp edges of betrayal flickered into his eyes. Maggie's eyes welled with tears again but she didn't back down, keeping her palms spread and her body shielding Bucky's. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words didn't come.

As if he couldn't stand to look at her, Tony turned away, eyes tracking to Steve's hand on his arm and then, after a long pause, up to his friend's face.

"Did you know?" he whispered.

Maggie's chest was heaving, her skin prickling. She felt Bucky shift behind her.

Steve met Tony's eyes. "I didn't know it was him."

"Don't bull _shit_  me Rogers,  _did you know_ ," Tony hissed, stepping into Steve's space. Maggie didn't recognize him like this; the rage that had taken over his features and his voice was alien. But then she felt a flicker of recognition – that anger, it reminded her of herself. It reminded her of the child who had whispered  _you're my mission now_ , the weapon who had pressed her claws into the Winter Soldier's throat, the woman who had held her heel spur over Vincent Silva's chest and been tempted.

There was a beat of silence, and Steve met Tony's furious gaze.

"Yes."

Maggie glanced over her shoulder at Bucky. He looked just as surprised as she felt, but that quickly slipped away into more self-hatred and remorse.

Tony shuddered and pushed away from Steve, his eyes bright. He looked away, clenching his jaw. Maggie could see the turmoil, the rage eating him up from within. She didn't blame him - for Steve to keep such a secret, for who knew how long... and for Tony to find out just after seeing that _video._ She knew they were close. She didn't understand why Steve would keep that from him, but she'd only known the man for a few days. All she knew was that that kind of betrayal had to  _burn._

As she watched Tony's face, Maggie realized that she knew that feeling; the scorching, all-consuming fire that licks up your bones and makes your vision blaze red. She could see it in his eyes. She didn't feel it now, though. She felt cold.

She saw the second Tony came to his decision. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment. He gritted his teeth.

And then, quicker than Maggie thought he could move, Tony's helmet snapped over his face and he threw his fist at Steve, knocking him across the ground. Maggie gasped and started to move – to help Steve, to help Tony, to protect Bucky, she wasn't sure – but then the mask of the protective suit she wore came up against her will and the suit shot her out of the way, zooming across the chamber toward the exit.

" _No_!" Maggie shouted, suddenly trapped in a polymer escape pod. Acting on instinct she extended her heel spurs, feeling them take out the repulsors on the suit's heels. She dropped to the ground, scraping across the metal grate, but the suit kept trying to pull her out of the way, maneuvering her arms and legs toward the door against her will. Her injured body blossomed with pain.

She heard a blast of repulsors, Bucky's pained cry, a clang of metal. Heart pounding, Maggie started tearing out of the protective suit from the inside, ripping her heel spurs through the polymer and pitting her super-serum strength against the A.I. controlling the suit. It only took her a few seconds – the suit was meant to protect unlucky civilians, not to imprison super-soldiers – and she left the suit in a pile of shreds as she sprang to her feet and looked around wildly for Bucky and Tony.

She spotted them on a raised platform a few feet away: Tony was fighting Steve, titanium clashing against Vibranium, and Bucky was on the ground. Maggie vaulted onto the platform and skidded across the concrete to him.

"Bucky!" she gasped, seizing his metal arm and helping him to his feet. Bucky glanced up.

"Meg-" his eyes went wide as he looked over her shoulder, and Maggie spun around to catch the fist meant for his face. The force behind Tony's armored punch jarred Maggie's bones but she held on, gripping the metal and looking right into his glowing eyeslots. Steve lay a few feet away, his ankles trapped in some kind of magnetic metal cuff.

"How could you?" Tony hissed.

Maggie's heart shattered, but she didn't let him go. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "But please don't do this."

Tony started firing up his repulsor, the gauntlet growing warm under her fingers, but then Bucky leaped forward and landed an uppercut to Tony's helmet, knocking him away from Maggie.

Tony seized Bucky and  _lifted_ , rocketing them both across the room and slamming Bucky into the wall a few floors up.

" _Stop_!" Maggie shouted, as her brother tried to fire a repulsor blast into Bucky's face. She followed them to the other side of the room, wishing she had her wings, or  _something_ , but then a rocket was fired and connected with one of the huge pylons. The support crumbled and the pylon came down in an avalanche of metal and smoke. Maggie dove into a side room, narrowly escaping a vast metal strut that slammed into the ground where she had been standing. She felt the rush of displaced air wash over her.

When Maggie glanced up, the chamber had been turned into a tangle of smoking metal parts and bursting sparks.

"Get out of here!" she heard Steve call, and she clambered onto an unstable-looking pile of wreckage to make sure everyone had made it. She cleared the last groaning strut just in time to see Bucky dashing in her direction, head ducked as he leaped over blocks of concrete. He spotted her, crouched on the heap of metal, and hesitated.

"Go!" she shouted, and he dashed into the missile chute with a grim look on his face. A repulsor blast followed in his wake.

Steve had dropped down between Tony and the missile chute and was trying to talk him down. Maggie scrambled toward them, not at all sure what she was planning to do, but she only made it halfway before Tony aimed his gauntlet at her and fired – not a repulsor blast, but some kind of concussive wave that propelled her off the pile of wreckage and sent her flying head over heels across the room. The far wall knocked the breath out of her when she hit it, and she slumped to the floor gasping.

By the time she got her feet under her and scrambled back to where she'd last seen them, Tony had collapsed the entryway to the missile chute. She could hear repulsor blasts, muffled shouts, and the Vibranium shield clanging. Maggie's heart sank and she glanced around wildly, until she spotted a Steve Rogers-shaped hole in the pile of debris. Gritting her teeth, she climbed through it.

Halfway up the missile chute, Steve helped Bucky to his feet and they both glanced down to where Iron Man had fallen. Several floors below that, they spotted a barefoot Maggie crawling through a hole in the wall, her blue prison scrubs covered in ash and scorch marks.

"He's not going to stop," Steve panted. "Go."

Bucky hesitated. "Meg-"

"He's just trying to get her out of the way," Steve urged, and pushed his friend. Bucky nodded once and leaped up to the next platform, casting a glance down at Maggie as she turned her pale face towards him.

Tony fired up his repulsors and started rising through the levels again, his slitted eye slots fixed on Bucky. Before he got close, however, Steve leaped, snagged a cable around the armor's neck and used his own body weight to yank Tony back down the chute. Tony fell with a strangled cry.

Tony and Steve slammed into platforms near the bottom of the chute, as Bucky got closer and closer to clear sky.

Maggie was close enough to act now. She sprang from platform to platform, her Adamantium heels clanging on each metal grate. She was a few platforms above Steve, and his shield whirred past her head when he threw it at Tony. Tony blasted the shield away and knelt, aiming a missile up at Bucky.

A second later Maggie hurdled onto his level and swung her leg out, kicking his arm away. She didn't give him a chance to react this time. She whirled into action, aiming kicks and punches at the weak points in his armor even though her feet were bare. "Stop this, Tony!" she shouted, as he reeled back from a kick to his chin.

She knew exactly why Tony was fighting, and it broke her heart – it was one thing to know the truth, another to  _see_ it, another for Steve to have kept it from him and yet  _another_ thing for Maggie to protect Bucky from him. But how could she explain the years of hatred and reconciliation and guilt, when Tony was so uninterested in words? She just needed to give Bucky enough time to get away, then maybe they could talk.

She only got in two more blows before Tony ducked under another kick and fired a repulsor blast into her chest.

It was a low-charge blast but it slammed her across the chute, making her choke on her own breath, and she collapsed on the platform below. Her chest stung. Ears ringing, Maggie looked up in time to see Tony flick his helmet back, squint up at Bucky, and fire the missile.

"No!"

Maggie's heart pounded as the missile soared over Bucky's head and impacted the massive hatch's hinge. The hatch came down with a resounding  _thud_ , and Bucky dropped to the platform below.

Maggie let out the breath she'd been holding, and her eyes flicked back to Tony. He'd put his helmet back down and fired up his repulsors again, gaze trained on Bucky.

Ignoring the ache in her chest, Maggie scrambled to her feet and leaped. She just caught Tony as he rose, wrapping her arms around his armored legs and halting his ascension. Her feet dangled in mid-air, and she gritted her teeth as his repulsors fired against her bare skin.

"Meg!" came Bucky's shout, and she looked up. She was met with Tony's helmet instead, his glowing eye slots glaring down at her.

" _Please_ ," she begged, grimacing against the repulsors burning her arms.

" _Stay. Down_." Tony gritted out, and before she could raise her arm to protect her face he aimed his gauntlet at her and fired.

But it wasn't a repulsor blast this time around. He fired two blue metal disks, which flicked past her face and formed into bands mid-air. With a magnetic  _click_ the bands locked around Maggie's ankles, and she realized he'd used these on Steve only minutes before.

The bands yanked Maggie free from Tony's legs and she fell, tumbling past levels and levels of platforms, too startled to scream.

She slammed into the second-to-last metal platform with a  _crunch_. Maggie broke her fall with her arms and felt one of her wrists break in a white-hot burst of pain. She cried out and tried to curl into a ball, but the bands around her ankles had magnetically sealed to the metal grate, locking her in place.

Above her there was a whine of repulsors and a metallic  _clank_ , and suddenly there were bodies falling. She saw the red-and-blue blurs of Tony and Steve fall past her, and managed to roll over enough to see Bucky collide with a platform below her.

There were a few brief, blessed moments of silence.

Bucky met Maggie's eyes through the metal grates, and for a few moments they absorbed the horror and fear in each other's eyes. But then Maggie's attention flicked toward the figure of Steve, face down on the concrete below, and Bucky rolled to follow her gaze.

Tony got to his feet; a red and gold Avenger.

Steve rose to face him. "This isn't going to change what happened," he said breathlessly.

"I don't care," Tony replied. His voice was utterly hopeless. "He killed my mom. He took my sister from me."

Maggie didn't have time to think about the way those words felt like someone had ripped out her heart, because at that Tony leaped forward again, landing a metal punch on Steve's face.

They duked it out, metal versus flesh, and Maggie flinched at the force behind their blows. Cursing, she sat up and started pulling at the blue glowing bands around her ankles. They didn't budge an inch.

"Come on, come on!" she hissed, flexing her legs and gritting her teeth against the sharp bite of the metal bands.

She sensed Bucky moving, and glanced over the edge of the platform to see him stagger to his feet, gripping Steve's shield. He looked up at her. Steve's pained shout echoed up the chute.

Maggie met Bucky's eyes and nodded, just once. He needed to protect Steve.

Bucky leaped from the platform, shield raised, and knocked Tony away from his friend.

Maggie went back to the metal bands, her heart beating desperately against her ribcage. She kicked and pulled at the unforgiving metal, groaning through her teeth as she moved her broken wrist. She could use her wings right about now, or even Steve's shield – that's how he got out of these bonds so quickly.

Maggie caught glimpses of the fight below as she struggled; Bucky and Steve working side-by-side to knock her brother to his knees, followed by the high whine of a laser as Tony tried to blast Bucky.

" _Stop_!" Maggie screamed down, for all the good it would do.

Seconds later there was a flash of light and she saw Bucky go rag-doll flying, slumping to the concrete. His left arm was gone.

Maggie screamed. Her vision blurred with panic and she pulled at the bonds around her ankles with both hands, feeling the metal beginning to crumple. Bucky looked lifeless on the ground, his face bloody. Maggie sobbed as the tearing metal bands started shredding her palms, but she didn't stop.

After a brutal brawl, Steve took a repulsor blast to the gut and collapsed to his knees. The sight of Tony, all hard metal and slitted eyes, standing over Bucky with nothing but a half-beaten Steve Rogers between them made Maggie's heart skip a beat. She dug her fingers in to the bands, feeling the metal groan and rend under her grip. The pain pulsing from her broken wrist was like a lightning bolt arcing up her arm and into her spine.

"He's my friend," Steve panted.

"So was I." Tony knocked Steve to the ground and threw him aside. "Stay down, final warning."

Steve was getting to his feet again, but Maggie wasn't paying attention any more. She clenched her fingers and heaved backwards, finally pulling free of the bands with a metallic shriek. She felt more of her ribs crack with the strain. She ignored that and her broken wrist and threw herself off the platform, freefalling for a second before she hit the ground and tumbled down the concrete slope.

She bounced down to the lower level just as Tony aimed his repulsor at Steve, only to be distracted as Bucky grabbed his boot. Tony turned and kicked Bucky in the face.

"No!" Maggie cried, but then Steve grabbed Tony and threw him to the ground. The crack of Tony's suit against the hard concrete made Maggie sob. She scrambled to Bucky, pressing her palm to his bloody cheek as her other hand fumbled along his neck, searching for a heartbeat. Steve started ragging on Tony, kneeling on the armor as he rained down blows. There was blood all over Bucky's face and his eyes were closed, but his pulse beat against Maggie's fingers and she gasped in relief.

Satisfied Bucky wasn't dead, Maggie looked up just in time to see Steve tear Tony's helmet off and hoist his shield over his head, ready for a final swing.

Maggie threw out her arm and shouted in a broken voice: "Please don't!"

Steve swung anyway, slamming his shield down – into Tony's arc reactor.

There were several moments of stillness.

The only sounds were heavy breathing and the dying whine of the arc reactor. Steve fell off Tony. Maggie had one hand pressed against Bucky's chest, and the other still raised toward Tony, reaching.

 _He's alive. He's alive. He's alive._ She stared at her brother's blood-streaked face as he lay beaten on the concrete.

Steve, with more strength than Maggie ever knew he had possessed, got once more to his feet. He pulled the shield out of Tony's chest, and the arc reactor sputtered. Maggie watched the light flicker.

Steve limped toward Maggie and Bucky, his head downcast. Maggie couldn't bear to look him in the eyes, so she glanced down at Bucky instead. His eyes were open now, dazed as he looked into Maggie's face.

Maggie didn't have room for thought. She wished she didn't have room for emotion, but her heart was ablaze with love and grief, too much for her to carry.

So she didn't think. As they had on the riverbank, Steve and Maggie pulled Bucky to his feet. Bucky slung his flesh arm over Steve's shoulder, groaning, and Maggie supported his injured side. His dark hair hung over his bloody face.

Tony had rolled onto his side, watching the three of them stand. "That shield doesn't belong to you," he spat at Steve. Maggie's heart wrenched at his voice. "You don't deserve it. My father made that shield!"

Steve paused, and Maggie shifted to stop Bucky slumping further. Tears were welling in her eyes again, as the pain from her injuries and her breaking heart clashed in her chest. She knew what she had to do.

Steve dropped his shield. Maggie flinched at the metallic clang, and glanced at Steve's face. His eyes were on the cold landscape ahead of them, and his jaw was set.

They kept moving.

They were a few steps out into the snow, leaving ash and blood in their wake, when Tony called out.

"Maggie!" It was more like a groan, as if he could hardly bear to acknowledge that she belonged to the name. Maggie's breath hitched in her throat. "You can't leave!"

 _I know._ She kept walking. Bucky's head lolled onto his shoulder, his hair brushing her bare skin.

When they hit the three hundred yard mark the metal bracelet on Maggie's wrist blinked red. The electric current was instantaneous – Maggie's muscles locked up and she toppled to the ground like a felled tree, her face crunching into the snow.

" _Meg_ ," Bucky croaked. Steve stumbled, taking Bucky's whole weight onto his shoulders, and twisted to look at her.

Maggie tried to fight the electric current paralysing her, but she only managed to slump to the side, casting her gaze up at the sky. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She could taste them on her lips.

Steve and Bucky's bloody faces appeared in her vision.

Steve's eyes flicked to the red blinking bracelet on her wrist. "What-"

"This is-" Maggie grunted, trying to speak through the currents locking her muscles in place. "This is where I get off."

"Meg-" Bucky slipped out of Steve's grip and fell to his knees beside her. He barely managed to stay upright. His fingers fumbled at the bracelet and then he jerked back, hissing through his teeth.  _Tamper-resistant technology_ , Maggie distantly realized.

"Meg," Bucky repeated, his voice choked now. "Meg, you're my mission."

Maggie let out a wet laugh that sounded more like a sob, and she drank in the sight of him. His grey-blue eyes were bright in his bloody face, and she could see how desperately he didn't want to leave her. Steve hovered worriedly over them.

"I know, I know," she sighed. There were snowflakes drifting into Bucky's hair. "You're my mission too. It's okay."

Bucky gritted his teeth and suddenly his hand was gripping the shoulder of her prison scrubs, pulling. She couldn't help the pained groan that tore up her throat as Bucky dragged her back in the direction they came, wrenching her injuries. Steve hustled to her other shoulder and helped Bucky move her inside the three hundred yard mark. Tony was out of sight, hidden behind the concrete bunker walls.

Once the bracelet flashed green again, Maggie let out a shuddering breath and heaved herself to her knees. Bucky was panting beside her, bleeding into the snow, his eyes glimmering as he looked at her. He listed to the side, unbalanced by the loss of his arm.

They met each other's eyes, and Maggie watched Bucky's face crumple as he realized what she'd decided to do.

They leaned together, and Maggie threw her arms around Bucky's chest. His one arm wrapped across her back, pulling her into him. She didn't protest as her ribs ached.

"It's okay," Maggie was mumbling. "It's okay, it's okay. I need to stay."

"I'm so sorry, Meg," Bucky murmured, his head tucked beside hers. "This might be… might be the end of the mission. You…" his voice cracked, and his head dropped to the crook of her neck. "You're better off with your family." She felt his tears on her skin.

Maggie tightened her hold on him. "If you think for one second you aren't my family, you're a goddamn idiot." He laughed; a low, broken thing. Into his ear, Maggie breathed "I love you."

His shoulders shook. "I love you too."

They kissed, bloody and quick, but just the simple touch of his lips against hers made Maggie start crying in earnest, sobs wracking her chest.

She let him go.

His warm bulk slid away, and Steve helped him clamber back to his feet. Maggie knelt in the snow, dashing her hand across her eyes so the tears stopped clouding her vision.

The first thing she saw was Steve's blue eyes, looking down at her.

"I know you'll look after him," she whispered. It wasn't a threat or a plea, she just knew it to be true.

Steve nodded, jerky and distraught, and then he turned away.

Maggie had lain on this frozen rock once before, watching an evil man in a helicopter disappear into a storm. She'd been confused then, without a mission.

She almost wished she was back in that moment.

Nothing could have prepared her for the howling emptiness she felt as she knelt bleeding in the snow, watching the man she loved stumble into a Quinjet and fly away.

The frozen rock bit into her knees, and the wind tore at her bare skin. Tony groaned on the concrete three hundred yards away.

Maggie looked up at the white, empty sky.


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry in advance for the shortish chapter! The next one will be nice and long to make up for it.
> 
> Also, quick question: would anyone be interested in a Wyvern-themed playlist? I just realized I've got a bunch of songs I closely associate with this fic, so if anyone wants to check that out just let me know and I'll make it happen :)

 

 

June 25th, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Rhodey was in his wheelchair when they arrived.

He hadn't wanted the wheelchair, he'd wanted to go straight from the hospital bed and into the exosuit that Tony promised. But when F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerted him to the aircraft about to arrive at the facility he heaved himself into the wheelchair chair and rolled toward the large window at the other end of the medical bay.

Ever the airman, the first thing he noticed was the aircraft. It was a glossy black jet, sleeker than the Quinjet, with smooth lines and a glowing blue engine. It wasn't any model he recognized.

The jet touched down on the landing pad, and a hatch at the back swung open. Rhodey noticed that a whole host of Facility staff, mostly armed guards, met the jet on the landing pad – Tony must have called ahead.

Tony was first down the gangway, wearing a black leather jacket and a sling. There were dark bags under his eyes. Rhodey's brow furrowed at the new gashes and bruises on his face – where had he been? Seconds later, Tony was followed by none other than King T'Challa in the Black Panther suit.

Tony gestured to the waiting Avengers employees and they streamed onto the jet. Rhodey watched, frowning, as Tony and T'Challa spoke to each other on the landing pad, occasionally glancing back at the jet. Tony looked like hell.

Another few seconds passed and the Avengers employees filed off the jet again, with a new person in tow.

Rhodey forgot about trying to work out what Tony and T'Challa were talking about. The person being escorted off the jet, cuffed and bloody, was  _Maggie._

Rhodey had seen the CCTV footage from Chile, and he'd seen Maggie in the Wyvern getup, but this felt different. If he'd thought Tony looked like hell, she looked worse. She was barefoot on the tarmac, wearing filthy, ripped scrubs. Burns and gashes littered her bare skin, her lip was split, and she was holding her swollen, purple wrist gingerly to her chest. She limped between the guards escorting her, her head downcast.

Rhodey's heart dropped. She just looked like a kid.

Tony didn't even look at Maggie as she was marched past him. Rhodey noted that the guards were leading her to the holding facility.

A few other Avengers staff carted the Iron Man armor, broken and lifeless, off the jet, as well as a few black duffel bags.

Tony and T'Challa spoke for another minute, still occasionally glancing at the jet, until T'Challa nodded once, climbed back on board, and flew away.

Rhodey sat back in his chair and waited.

 

Sure enough, a few minutes later Tony limped into the medical bay. His face was sunken with bruises and covered in dried blood. They made eye contact and Tony's mouth turned down, as if he'd hoped Rhodey wouldn't be there.

For once, Tony didn't say anything. He averted his gaze and started limping around the medical bay, grabbing wet wipes and bandages. His silence was tense and angry, disturbing the air around him.

Finally, Rhodey couldn't stand it. "Well?"

Tony gritted his teeth. "We got the guy who did the UN bombing. Helmut Zemo, Sokovian, he wanted to…" he cut himself off and shook his head angrily. "T'Challa's taking him to the CIA now. It's over." He kept his back to Rhodey as he started wiping the dried blood from his face.

Rhodey cocked an eyebrow. "And?"

Tony slammed his fist into the metal bench. The resulting  _clang_ made Rhodey flinch.

"And  _nothing_ ," Tony hissed, hunched over the bench with his back still facing Rhodey. "It's over. All of it." He grabbed his bandages and stormed out without another word.

In the silence that followed, Rhodey dropped his head back against the window behind him and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

The next day Tony went to get the Spider kid from Berlin, and when he came back he presented Rhodey with the newly fabricated exosuit. Rhodey had been reading Tony for decades, and though Tony looked better Rhodey could tell from the stiff, closed-off expression on his face that this wasn't the time to bring up his angry outburst from yesterday, or the new resident in the holding facility.

Tony helped him try out the exosuit and they managed to make each other laugh, but then Tony got a package and disappeared to his office.

Rhodey stumped around in the exosuit under the watchful eyes of a physiotherapist, determined to get it right. And if his thoughts kept straying to a holding cell on the other side of the compound, he could hardly blame himself.

 

* * *

 

_Tony,_

_I'm glad you're back at the compound, I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine. And you and Maggie deserve a chance to be a family again._

_I've been on my own since I was 18. I never really fit in anywhere – even in the Army. My faith is in people, I guess. Individuals. And I'm happy to say that for the most part, they haven't let me down. Which is why I can't let them down either. Locks can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn't._

_I know I hurt you Tony. I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but… I can see now I was really sparing myself, and I'm sorry. Hopefully one day you can understand._

_I wish we agreed on the Accords, I really do. I know you were only doing what you believe in, and that's all any of us can do, it's all any of us should. So no matter what, I promise you – if you need us, if you need me, I'll be there._

-  _Steve_

 

Tony kept the phone.

 

* * *

 

Maggie's room was nice.

She'd caught a glimpse of the building when she arrived – nondescript, bordering the forest, small compared to the other buildings on the compound. She hadn't really been paying much attention, though.

Her room had a full-wall window that looked out at the forest. She wasn't completely sure if it was a real window or a screen that showed footage of a forest, but she knew that either way it would hold up against even her super-soldier strength. Not that she felt like testing that.

The walls of her room were a soothing grey. She had a bed – a metal frame bolted to the floor and a mattress with eggshell-white sheets – and a small bathroom. That was it. She could see how highly reinforced the room was; heavy-duty construction was obvious in the lines of the walls, and in the thick metal door that vacuum-sealed against the walls when it closed. The room was soundproofed, too – Maggie never once heard a sound originating from outside her four walls.

Her only visitors were the doctors. They came in escorted by armed guards and checked on her wounds, clinical and professional. Maggie cooperated with them, nodding or shaking her head in response to their questions, but she didn't speak, and she didn't let them take her blood. She was relieved when they shrugged and put the needle away. She didn't want to fight anyone.

They categorized her injuries: cracked ribs and spine, a broken wrist, burns from Tony's repulsors on her arms. Her right side was torn up from crashing on the airport tarmac, and there was gravel and glass in her feet from fighting barefoot. Her palms and fingers were near-shredded from physically tearing through the metal bands around her ankles. Her skin was purple and blue with bruises.

The doctors fussed over her, wrapping and bandaging and medicating, but Maggie knew she'd heal sooner than she deserved. The check-ups were short, and the instant they were over the doctors and the guards filed out again.

The room didn't remind her of HYDRA, but if it did, Maggie supposed she would deserve it.

She tried not to sleep, because she woke up screaming every time. But it wasn't like the days after she'd escaped HYDRA – this time, she woke up knowing exactly who she was, and what she'd done. Each time she woke she went through her breathing techniques, desperately trying to clear her head of all thoughts, and then turned to see a tray of food that had been delivered while she slept. Maggie suspected that the A.I. was monitoring her. It had not spoken to her, and she didn't try to speak to it.

Maggie spent her hours sitting on the floor in front of the wide window, watching the forest. It was quiet out there, but if she looked close enough she could see signs of life: mushrooms growing on the trees, small creatures foraging in the foliage, birds soaring out of the branches and into the sky.

She hoped the window was real.

 

* * *

 

Medical Facility, Wakanda

Steve found Bucky by the arching windows of Wakanda's medical facility, hunched over in a chair as he looked out at the mist-laden forest.

They'd just gotten back from the Raft breakout, and were waiting for the others to be cleared by Wakanda's doctors. T'Challa's sister Shuri seemed more than happy to fuss over the odd bunch. Everyone had been so kind to them – first T'Challa, for offering them sanctuary, and then his people for helping them. Bucky had been resistant to accepting help from T'Challa at first, after the man had repeatedly tried to kill him and then hurt Maggie, but the genuine remorse in T'Challa's eyes swayed him.

The others had been confused when they'd escaped the Raft with only four prisoners.

"Where's Maggie?" Sam had asked. Steve hadn't known what to say.

Back in Wakanda, Bucky had taken the first opportunity to isolate himself.

Steve sighed, taking a moment to look at his friend. Bucky was bruised and cut up, but so were the rest of them. Shuri had fitted a rubber sleeve over what was left of his metal arm, and Bucky still seemed to be getting used to the weight difference.

It wasn't Bucky's external injuries that made Steve's heart ache in his chest, though. It was the lost look in his eyes, the turmoil that churned behind his calm façade as he looked out at the misty forest. Steve had suspected a deeper connection between Maggie and Bucky during the time he'd spent on the run with them, but he hadn't really had time to question it. But after what he'd seen in Siberia, he was pretty sure he knew exactly what Bucky had lost.

"You love her," Steve murmured.

Bucky didn't flinch. He'd known Steve was there. Bucky swallowed, and let out a long breath. "She… She was my victim. And then she got stronger, and I kept waiting for her to kill me. I wasn't going to stop her, she hated me enough to get through the programming and attack me. But then she didn't kill me. And then she forgave me. And then…" Bucky dropped his head into his hand. Steve stayed silent – he could tell that Bucky needed to get this out.

"I don't deserve it," Bucky whispered. "I… I killed her family. I helped HYDRA turn her into…"

"It wasn't you," Steve repeated.

As if Steve hadn't spoken, Bucky continued to talk. "She said she knew what it was like. She said she'd killed plenty of people's parents, she knew what it was like to be a monster." His voice cracked on the word. "We were in that hell together, and then we weren't, and she stayed. I don't know what I'd have done if…" he shook his head, and then turned to look at Steve. His eyes were dark. "I think this is what makes me a monster, Steve, along with everything else that I've done. I ruined her life and I didn't try to save her, not once. And I love her. I want… I want to see her again." Bucky's face crumpled and he bowed his head again.

Steve paced across the shiny floor and sat beside his friend. He couldn't get those last moments in Siberia out of his head: Bucky and Maggie's whispered, tearful conversation in the snow, and the way they'd clung to each other, shaking, as if the world was falling down around them.

_I know you'll look after him._

"You're not a monster, Buck," Steve sighed. "Like you said, you both went through hell together – no one could blame you for making a connection. You're both good people."

Bucky scoffed at that, but it was half-hearted. Steve realized that Bucky had a lot more difficulty condemning Maggie than he did himself.

Sensing that Bucky's mood was lightening a little, Steve smiled and dropped a hand onto Bucky's uninjured shoulder. "Besides, I got the sense that your feelings aren't exactly one-sided. Is that what you've been doing for the last two years, Buck, stepping out with your girl?"

Bucky laughed, and leaned back. His face was still troubled, but the laughter made him look years younger. "Maybe next time we could do a double date."

Steve groaned, and Bucky continued: "You could bring that Carter lady, we'll go out dancing, it'll be a great time."

"It was never a great time," Steve complained, shoving Bucky.

"Ah, but this one likes 'ya. She wouldn't mind if you stepped on her toes a little."

Steve laughed again, then stilled. "I missed you, Buck."

"I missed you too, punk."

They sat in silence for a few companionable minutes, until Steve sensed Bucky's thoughts turned dark again. He waited him out.

"Do you think…" Bucky cleared his throat. "Is he…  _Tony_ , is he going to look after her?"

Steve sighed. Maggie hadn't been at the Raft, which meant she was probably at the Avengers Facility with Tony – there was no hope of breaking her out of there, and Steve wasn't sure that was for the best anyway.

He was sure that Bucky wouldn't have left Maggie behind if he thought she'd be in danger, but he understood the need for reassurance. Bucky's only experiences with Tony had been violent.

"As angry as he is at me, at us…" Steve rubbed a hand over his jaw. "She's his sister. He's not going to let anything happen to her." The unspoken  _again_ hung uncomfortably in the air.

"Okay," Bucky replied in a small voice.

A little later, Bucky broke the silence again. "Listen, Steve… I'm not safe." He bit his lip. "I've been thinking…"

 

* * *

 

Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

A week had gone by, and Tony Stark was hiding.

At first Rhodey didn't notice, because he was giving his friend some space, and because he kinda had his own thing going on, what with full-time physiotherapy and trying to figure out the exosuit. He'd also been keeping an eye on the reorganization of the Avengers, now that most of them were gone, and finding a place for the items they'd seized over the past few weeks: the JTTF had passed on Barnes' personal effects from his safehouse and his backpack, and they'd found a backpack full of more personal effects in an old Beetle at the Leipzig/Halle airport. The items were inventoried and locked in the acquisitions room.

Tony had taken a duffle bag full of tech to his workshop in the Facility. Rhodey hadn't asked.

Tony checked in every few days to make sure Rhodey's exosuit was running smoothly, or just to chat, but that had been happening less and less.

After finishing a doctor's check-up one afternoon, Rhodey cocked his head and asked: "F.R.I.D.A.Y., where's Tony?"

When the A.I. spoke, her every word dripped with disapproval. "Boss doesn't want me to tell anyone where he is."

Rhodey blinked. "Okay. What's Tony been doing all this time?"

There was a pause. "He's been working for sixty one hours with less than a couple of hours sleep at a time." Rhodey would never understand how the A.I. managed to sound both disapproving and concerned at the same time. Normally F.R.I.D.A.Y. wouldn't dish so much dirt about Tony to anyone who asked, but Rhodey suspected she had a certain amount of leeway when it came to letting the people close to Tony know when Tony wasn't doing so well.

"Right." Rhodey sighed, and pinched his nose.

For a week Tony had avoided all mention of his sister, and completely steered clear of her holding cell. She was a prisoner in the secure area of the facility and would likely remain there since the Raft had proven to be not as impenetrable as everyone believed. Rhodey had looked over her arrangements himself – one of the nicer secure rooms, designed for Avengers themselves if they got brainwashed or needed to be locked up for some other reason. She had daily doctor's consults, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. monitored her behavior 24/7. So far all Maggie had done was eat, sleep, and stare out the window. Rhodey wanted to see her, but if Tony hadn't yet…

"Okay," Rhodey said, nodding to himself. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., you can't tell me where Tony is, right?"

"Unfortunately not."

"Can you tell me where he  _isn't_?"

When the A.I. replied, it actually sounded like she was smirking _._  "Sure thing, Colonel."

After an annoying game of where-isn't-Tony with F.R.I.D.A.Y., during which Rhodey staggered through the Facility in his exosuit drawing pitying looks from staff, he finally arrived at Tony's workshop. He should have just gone straight there, to be honest – Tony had always gone to his workshop when he was trying to drown out the feedback loop in his head. Or when he was avoiding real life.

The workshop was locked, but Rhodey had the override codes. And F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn't seem that committed to keeping him out, anyway.

When he walked in, he blinked at the sight before him. Tony was slumped over his main workshop bench, with a minefield of machine parts and half-finished projects strewn around him. Tony wasn't necessarily a neat person, but he'd never usually let his workshop get this bad. Right now he was half-heartedly flicking through a holographic design for… something. Maybe a rocket engine?

"Hey Tony," Rhodey called, clanking awkwardly into the workshop. There was no way he was going to be able to navigate the mess of machinery in here in the exosuit.

Tony blinked and glanced up. He looked terrible – his eyes were glazed and shot with red, and it didn't look like he'd showered in a while. "Yeah?" he mumbled.

Abruptly, Rhodey remembered another workshop, another day many years ago. He sighed. "Okay, Tony. I need you to stay there and just… shut up, for a minute. Don't leave."

Tony glared, and then seemed to realize what was happening. A shadow crossed his face and he turned back to the holographic blueprint. He didn't get up from his seat, though, which Rhodey took as a good sign.

"I don't know what happened with Zemo," Rhodey began. "And I don't need to know. But Tony… your sister is  _here_."

Tony's eyes sharpened and darkened as he manipulated the image before him, but he didn't interrupt.

"You've both lived lives," Rhodey continued. "Very separate lives. And yeah, you were on opposite sides of this thing but you're both here, now. For a guy who thought he'd lost his whole family, I'd say that's a pretty rare opportunity."

Tony's focused, angry look deepened. He gave up on pretending he was busy and looked right into Rhodey's eyes. "Barnes killed our parents," he spat. "He kidnapped her."

The words hit Rhodey like a blow to the chest, and he had to drop a hand onto the nearest surface to steady himself.  _Barnes._

No wonder Tony had come back so angry. He'd suspected that Tony and T'Challa hadn't brought Zemo in on their own, and this… this made a lot more sense.

After that initial realization, Rhodey felt himself cycle through a series of emotions in seconds: shock, then a hot burst of anger, which faded to dull, gnawing sadness. "So HYDRA did orchestrate the crash," he sighed, and the exosuit groaned precariously. "They sent the Winter Soldier."

When he looked back up at Tony, Tony seemed somehow angrier. "Rhodey, she… she defended the guy who  _killed our parents._ She saw him do it, and then she stayed with him, instead of finding me. I don't understand how she could do that."

Rhodey nodded, unblinking. "Then ask her."


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the playlist is a go! Have a listen: https://8tracks.com/emmagnetised/the-wyvern  
> There's an annotation on each song about why I chose it, so I'd give those a read. Happy listening, and I'd love to hear what you think!

 

Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

When the door opened, near-silent on its automated tracks, Maggie distantly thought  _the doctors are early_. She was sitting in front of the window with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching a squirrel hop timidly from tree branch to tree branch.

But then she realized she could only hear one pair of footsteps. Maggie whirled to her feet, adrenaline flooding her system, and abruptly froze.

Tony looked terrible. His arm was still in a sling, and bags hung under his eyes. His face was bruised. He wore a pair of dark trousers, a t-shirt and a black jacket.

For a moment Maggie was overwhelmed by the sight of him – he'd been haunting her waking and sleeping dreams, but the sight of him in front of her in the flesh was a shock.

His face was hard, his eyes unreadable, but at least he wasn't looking at her with the hatred she'd seen when T'Challa found them, separate and silent in the snow. There was certainly a lot of wariness in his expression, though.

Tony held her gaze for a few more seconds, then glanced away to look around the room as if he didn't know every inch of it. "So the doctors tell me that you're healing up just fine," he said conversationally, strolling to the nearest wall and tapping it with his fingertips.

He was right, she was mostly healed – she still had some fading bruises and her ribs and wrist weren't quite right, but she was getting there. Her hands were still bandaged, though – she'd probably have scars for a long time.

Maggie didn't respond. She stood, silhouetted by the window, watching her brother.

As the seconds passed and Maggie didn't say anything, Tony looked away from the pale grey wall and shot a frustrated glance at her. "Are you angry at me?"

"No." Her eyes tracked him as he started to pace back and forth.

"Then why the stand-and-stare?"

Maggie took a breath. "I don't know what to say to you."

"Huh." Tony sat down abruptly on the end of her perfectly-made bed. "Guess we have that in common." He looked out the window, his face troubled, and the fingers of his free hand tapped a rhythm against his chest. Maggie watched the movements.

When Tony caught her looking, his fingers stilled. "Yeah, this…" he frowned down at his chest. "I used to have a thing-"

"A miniaturized arc reactor," Maggie finished, her voice hoarse from disuse. "It kept shrapnel out of your heart after your kidnapping in Afghanistan, until you had it removed in late 2012."

Tony sat back, eyeing her. "Keeping tabs on me?"

Maggie looked away. "Not… not at the time. Later."

"What were you doing at the time?" She could hear his teeth grinding together.

She looked up again, and caught his gaze. "Do you really want to know?"

" _Yes_." Tony threw up his hands and glanced around, as if appealing to an invisible audience. "You have to ask that? I've always wanted to know everything, no matter if it's good for me, and I don't know anything about you. I want to." She could tell he'd been aiming for a light tone, but with those last three words his voice caught, and he glanced away.

Maggie watched him, measuring his words. "Alright," she eventually murmured. She shifted, taking a few steps away from Tony and turning to rest her back against the wall. The light streaming in from the window illuminated one side of her face, casting the other in shadow. "That year, while you were saving the world, I was working on the databanks that housed Arnim Zola's consciousness. I helped him prepare to murder millions of people." Tony flinched, and Maggie's chest burned with a kind of bitter satisfaction. "Then I was in Singapore, to spy on a financial conglomerate and murder a young man. I saw the news coverage of when they thought you died in your mansion, and I… reacted." Maggie swallowed and looked down. "Wasn't the first time. I also caught wind of your disappearance in Afghanistan in 2009, and there were a couple of other times. I wasn't sure why I reacted, I thought it must have been relevant to the mission, but I couldn't figure out a connection." She shrugged. "I guess I was the connection."

Tony ran a hand over his face. "Okay." He stood up, and Maggie eyed him warily. "Okay." He paced back and forth for about a minute, then looked back at Maggie. His mouth opened and closed a few times. "I have to…" he cut himself off, shook his head, and then walked out of the room without another word.

Startled, Maggie looked at the closed door for a few moments with wide eyes.  _What?_

She let out a long breath and slid down the wall, until she was sitting once more on the hard floor, watching the forest.

 

* * *

 

"Well?"

Tony's head jumped up at Rhodey's question. He was back in the workshop, but he was cleaning up, and he looked better, despite the complicated expressions chasing across his face. "What?"

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "How did it go?"

Tony made a face as if he'd just sucked on a lemon, and tossed a bundle of wires into the trash. "It went… it's…" he shook his head, sighing. "Fine. It went fine."

Rhodey cocked an eyebrow. "It went  _fine_? What did you talk about?"

"I don't even… the arc reactor? And then… some people she killed-" seeing Rhodey's rising eyebrows, Tony shrugged. "I was only in there for like five minutes, it was weird. I don't know what to say to her."

Rhodey pinched the bridge of his nose. "Did you ask her about Barnes?"

"No, I've decided to live solidly in denial about that, thanks." Tony looked over his shoulder. "Dum-E, sweeping was one of the very first things you were programmed to do, how can you still be this bad at it?"

The robot trilled, and Rhodey rolled his eyes. "Look, Tony. You don't have to talk about Barnes yet if you don't want, and I doubt she really wants to talk about it either. You can work up to it. But if you want to talk to her, just do it. She's the definition of a captive audience right now." He sighed. "Christ, I can't believe I'm giving  _you_  advice on how to talk to people. This is so weird."

Tony started clearing his workbench. "Talking isn't the problem," he grumbled. "It's  _saying_ something."

 

* * *

 

Tony came back the next day. He arrived after the doctors this time, and went straight to sit on the end of the bed. Maggie, still seated on the floor by the window, swiveled to look at him.

"Hello," she tried. She felt bad about her silence yesterday.

"Oh," Tony said. "Hey." He lifted his hand, revealing that he'd brought a… mug? "I got coffee, I realize the menu here's not exactly…" he shook his head, placed the mug on the floor and slid it towards her with two fingers. He had another mug in his other hand. "It's not poisoned or anything, but I don't know if you drink – oh, I guess you do," he trailed off as Maggie picked up the mug and started draining it.

Halfway through the coffee, Maggie realized that it might be considered impolite to finish it in one go, and she pulled the mug away from her lips. The simple familiarity of coffee after being locked into this strange reality was a blessing.

Tony toasted her with his own mug, and took a sip.

An awkward silence fell.

Maggie shifted uncomfortably. She'd been so startled by Tony's appearance yesterday that it had taken her a while to calm her mind again. Of all the things they could have spoken about, yesterday had felt… odd. She hadn't meant to tell him so much about those few particular missions, but she'd been so taken aback at his entreaty to learn more about her that she wanted to remind him of who – of what – she was. But he'd come back again anyway.

"Do you need anything?" Tony blurted out, then looked annoyed at himself. At Maggie's questioning look, he added: "coffee, more food… something? I know you've got that super soldier metabolism."

The additional reminder of her differences made them both uncomfortable. Maggie took another sip of her coffee, closing her eyes at the familiar taste. "Um… no," she murmured. "Thank you." She'd done enough to Tony, she didn't need to start using him as room service.

"Okay, that's… good." Tony cleared his throat, then put his coffee down and turned to face her fully. "This is weird, right?"

Maggie's eyebrows rose. "Weird?"

He gestured between them. "This is weird. Is it weird? I can leave, if you want, I realize you might not want me here-"

"I don't want you to leave," Maggie interrupted, then took another sip of her coffee to distract from the earnestness that had slipped into her voice.

She'd been doing her best to keep calm over the past week, focusing on the life outside her room instead of the threatening darkness in her mind. Tony was distracting, but his presence – real, alive,  _here_  – was enthralling.

Maggie tentatively looked back up at Tony's face. His eyes were on her, considering.

She swallowed. "But it is weird."

He huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I noticed." He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, then thought better of it when his arm in the sling gave him trouble. "Seriously, though-" he leveled his gaze at her. "Do you need anything? Or… or do you have any questions?"

Maggie met his eyes. He was so obviously torn between a dizzying array of emotions – the anger was still there, flickering occasionally in his eyes, mixed with distrust and betrayal. He was also apparently uncomfortable with keeping prisoners around the place, particularly prisoners he was related to.

He was trying hard to conceal everything he felt, but Maggie was good at watching people. And what she saw, hidden in his dark eyes and his awkward questioning, was that he  _cared_ about her.

It hurt. Particularly because whatever this was – the kindness, the sentiment – it wasn't for her. It was for the Maggie that Tony remembered, and she couldn't bring that little girl back.

Maggie cleared her throat, and her eyes flickered to forest outside. Eventually, she asked: "Is that window real?"

He gave her a weird look. "Why wouldn't it be real?"

She didn't respond to the question, but a tentative smile lifted her lips. "Thanks," she murmured.

Tony watched his sister for a few more moments, taking in the way her smile eased the exhausted lines on her face. She looked young, barefoot in a pair of grey scrubs, until you looked into her eyes.

"Really, that's it? That's all you want to ask?" His tone was light, but the anger and violence from a week ago hung over the words.

Maggie's smile slipped away, and she met Tony's eyes again. "Are the others still in that prison?"

He considered that for a moment, peering at her as if trying to figure out why she might be asking. Eventually, he shook his head. "No, they uh… escaped."

Maggie's face flickered with emotion before she managed to shut it down, but Tony saw her relief. Of all the things her mind had been torturing her about in the empty hours, the fate of Steve's friends had been an uncomfortable weight on her shoulders. Her soft bed and view of the forest was a far cry from the oppressive floating prison from before. Sure, it was still a prison, but she worried about the others.

Maggie would bet anything that Steve had been the one to get them out. Strangely, Tony didn't seem too angry or upset about the breakout.

"Okay," she finally said.

Thankfully, Tony didn't dig further into that topic. He shrugged, stretched his neck, and then picked up his cup. "I'll bring you more coffee tomorrow."

Part of her wanted to question him. But she stayed silent as he left the room, because the promise of tomorrow was too tempting to risk him changing his mind.

 

The next day, as promised, Tony brought her more coffee. He started the conversation by walking right up to the window and asking "so what's so freaking interesting that you sit and stare out there all day?"

Maggie told him about the forest animals she'd seen, and named some of the plants that she recognized from her brief interest in botany.

"Does that mean you know where we are?" he asked. "Through like, some kind of Sherlock Holmes type of 'that-mushroom-only-grows-in-this-area' wizardry?"

She hid a smile. "Sure. That kind of beech tree-" she pointed- "is only local to upstate New York."

Tony twitched, and turned to blink at her. "Seriously?"

Maggie smirked. "No. But I know where the Avengers Facility is."

He rolled his eyes. "Of course you do." The words were only tinged with a little bitterness. "Seriously, I'm going to bring you something to do. You stare at trees any longer and you'll turn into an Ent."

"You've read  _The Lord of the Rings_?" she asked, her coffee paused halfway to her lips.

Tony blinked at her. " _You've_ read  _The Lord of the Rings_?"

They stared at each other for a few seconds until Maggie smiled at the absurdity of it, making him snicker in return.

"Sure," she said. "I like Gimli."

Tony stared at her like she'd grown a second head. "I don't understand you at all," he said, as if the thought had popped into his mind and been spoken in the same instant.

That hit them both a little too close to home, and after another awkward silence Tony cleared up their cups and left the room again. He didn't promise tomorrow, but Maggie found herself hoping anyway.

 

* * *

 

On it went. Tony visited her for a few minutes each day, whirling in at irregular hours, asking questions and talking about nothing in particular. He brought her coffee, and sometimes fresh fruit, and they stood together in front of the window. After her small botany lesson Tony had decided she was liable to lose her mind of boredom, and started to bring her things to do. First there was a wooden puzzle, which she solved within ten minutes of his having left the room. Next he brought her a copy of J. M. Barrie's  _Peter Pan_. She saved her tears for after he'd left, even though she knew the A.I. was still looking.

Next time, Tony brought her a tablet and told her that F.R.I.D.A.Y. would load any e-book onto it that she wanted. She contemplated that gift for a long time before she used it, unsure what it meant.

A few days later, when Tony got an alert that Maggie had tried to hack into F.R.I.D.A.Y., he rushed straight to the holding cell. As soon as the door swished open she jumped to her feet and exclaimed "I didn't mean to, I was just curious about how she worked!" Tony looked from the tablet, left near the door like some kind of offering, to the anxiety clear on Maggie's face, and sighed.

He tapped on his watch, bringing up a holograph of F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s mainframe.

"This is F.R.I.D.A.Y.," he explained, as Maggie's eyes widened at the glowing blue structure. "She's based on the U.I. I designed after… after I took over the company. J.A.R.V.I.S."

She blinked. "J-Jarvis?"

His hand hesitated as it manipulated the hologram. "Yeah. Jarvis. Anyway, I started with these basic protocols…"

 

After that day, Maggie and Tony started to discuss some of his other inventions – he was amused when she gushed about the miniaturized arc reactor, and she listened attentively when he explained how he'd designed an exosuit for Rhodey. She suggested a tweak to the gyroscopic stability module in the exosuit that –  _no,_ Tony had to remind himself. Rhodey had said no more tinkering with the exosuit until he got used to walking around in it.

Tony had been so scared that he'd find a stranger in the holding cell, and in some ways he did, but once they got started it was almost easy for them to talk to each other. Since Bruce had left he was used to half his jargon going over people's heads, and it was almost jarring when Maggie was able to not only keep up with him, but suggest solutions to problems that he hadn't even thought of. If he wasn't keeping her locked up he'd have whisked her off to his workshop in minutes.

But all too often, they fell into heavy and charged silences. The tension of the unsaid things between them hung over every interaction, making them both edgy. After the first day they didn't discuss Maggie's past with HYDRA, or the events that had brought them together so recently.

The closest they got was when, a few days in, Tony segued abruptly from talking about his advancements in clean energy to asking: "do you want a psychiatrist?"

Maggie had blinked at his sudden change of topic, but then her face started to close off. If he'd suggested it in any other way ( _you need a psychiatrist_ ) she'd have said no right away. That was the first thing they'd done to Bucky, locked him in a glass prison for  _psychological evaluation._ Maggie winced at the sharp-edged memories of Bucky, and pushed them away.

She remembered wishing she could turn to a professional for help, back when her mind was a snowstorm and she barely knew who she was. She still wished that, but…

Maggie glanced around at her four walls, at the microscopic cameras she'd noticed on the first day, and finally at Tony's tense face.

"Can I think about it?" she murmured.

"Sure," Tony said. "Sure, that's fine, just… let F.R.I.D.A.Y. know. Anyway, after the launch of the Tower the coal companies started to get  _really_ nervous…"

 

Sometimes it felt like they were shouting at each other across a plunging void, trying to make some kind of connection before they grew too far apart. Every word they said was haunted by their twenty five years apart, by the disaster in Siberia. They could discuss arc reactors and mechatronics all they liked, but Maggie felt like she could only reveal ten percent of herself to her brother, the safe ten percent. She kept any personal connection to a topic vague at best, mostly relying on the vast amount of reading she'd done. She hated censoring herself – she'd spent too much of her life repressing her feelings and thoughts, molding herself into what HYDRA wanted.

But the other ninety percent of Maggie would drive Tony away.

Maggie could tell that her brother had changed in their time apart, as well. The Tony she remembered had been flighty, driven by youth and passion and intense emotions, though he hid it behind a wall of sarcasm. He was still passionate and sarcastic, but there was a gravity in his eyes now – Maggie knew that her brother had seen awful things in his lifetime, and had to become a survivor and a hero. He was more solemn than she remembered, and more often than not he just looked  _tired,_ with the weight of the things he'd learned and the friends he'd lost on his shoulders. Of course, she only caught glimpses of this. It seemed Tony was hiding himself from her, too.

Once, Maggie slipped while talking about a chemical fusion experiment she'd tried, and almost mentioned Bucky's name. She only got as far as saying "I showed it to B-" before she cut herself off, eyes round with panic, and scrambled for a new topic. Anger clouded Tony's face and Maggie was sure that the dam had broken, that this was the end of whatever small link still existed between them. But then he swallowed back his rage and changed the subject, leaving Bucky's unsaid name hanging between them like an omen.

Tony didn't know how he had it in him to ignore it. Normally he was great at living in denial, but this strange back-and-forth felt like it had a time limit. Sometimes, when Maggie chattered about some harmless topic or another, while carefully avoiding mentioning how she had learned about it, Tony found himself staring at the blank grey walls of her room, wondering when it would become too hard to dance around the things that threatened to tear this tentative truce apart.

Despite the tension hanging over them, Maggie hung on to every word. She was sure that Tony was just grasping for his past version of Maggie, but she was too greedy to let him down gently. When he left her cell she turned over every word of their conversation, fascinated by her brother.

Neither of them knew what the hell they were doing.

 

* * *

 

It took Pepper Potts two weeks and one day to figure out what was going on.

She'd been keeping her distance from the Avengers Facility since she and Tony split up, sending teams of assistants in her place whenever she had business there. But after all the business with the Accords, Pepper realized she needed to be there – for Rhodey, and for Tony. Of course, Tony had been more difficult than usual to track down, so she spent her time with Rhodey and Happy, doing what she could to help with Rhodey's rehabilitation, and going over Avengers business.

Until one day, she looked away from Happy and Rhodey's conversation to see a Tony-shaped blur rush past the corridor outside.

She was out of the room in seconds. "Tony!"

He stumbled to a halt, shoes squeaking on the immaculate corridor floor.

"Heeeyyyyy, Pep!" he called, spinning around with a disarming smile on his face. She didn't buy it for a second – his eyes were haunted, he looked exhausted, and he was fidgeting with two empty mugs.

Pepper narrowed her eyes.

"So you're back," Tony said, clearing his throat. "That's great, it's really great. Catching up with Rhodey? Awesome. Thanks for being here, it's… I'm really – anyway, I'd better go clean these up-"

He started to turn around again, but Pepper closed the distance between them and grabbed his sleeve. She must have jostled one of his injuries – she'd heard he got hurt, but she didn't know how bad – because he winced and stilled.

"Sorry!" she gasped, backing away again. "I'm sorry, are you-"

"I'm fine, Pepper, what do you-"

"What's going on?" she shot back, rallying herself. "First I hear about that big fight in Germany, and then I hear you got the guy who did the U.N. bombing, and  _then_ I hear that half the Avengers are fugitives-"

"Yep, yep, that all happened-"

"And now Rhodey's hurt and I hear  _you_ got hurt but I don't hear from you, even now the Accords are set up?"

Tony swallowed. "I probably could have called."

Pepper put her hands on her hips and ran an eye over him. He seemed nervous, fidgety, more so than usual. He was still clearly healing, and she  _knew_ he'd been avoiding her. She didn't know why, since she'd seen the Accords as his way of making a compromise. Once it was settled, why hadn't he come to talk to her?

Tony shifted under her gaze, rubbing his jaw, tapping his foot, drumming his fingers against the space on his chest where the arc reactor used to be.

Pepper squinted. "What don't I know?"

He stilled. "Rhodey didn't tell you?"

"No, but don't think I can't tell when he's covering for you, he gets all guilty and quiet."

"That checks out, Rhodey's terrible at poker."

"This isn't  _poker_ , Tony."

Tony sighed, and finally let go of the falsely-cheerful facade. His shoulders sagged, and Pepper took a few unconscious steps toward him.

"Okay," he muttered, and then met her eyes. "Pep, I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

 

They found a quiet room, and Tony explained everything.

When he fell silent, with his hair askew from running his hands through it, Pepper pulled her hand away from her mouth.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't here," she whispered.

"It's okay," he said, not meeting her eyes. "You needed… we needed a break. I know that."

She took a step into his space, forcing him to meet her gaze. "And do we still need that break?"

Tony took a breath. The question was part inquiry, part test. He normally hated it when people tested him, but Pepper had been burned too many times to take another trust fall. She needed him to be sure.

Tony thought about how he was still a mess, about how he basically had his sister locked up in his basement, with no real plan about what to do with her. He thought about the strange, vague conversations he and Maggie had been having. He thought about Maggie hiding her life from him, and Tony pretending he was okay with it.

But then he thought about the plans he, Rhodey, and Vision had been making with Ross. He was still planning to save the world, but now there were rules and schedules and… maybe it would be enough. He'd given up nearly everything to make it happen.

Tony looked into Pepper's eyes; sad and blue and picking up every small detail he tried to hide.

"No," he murmured, his heart pounding.

Pepper pulled him into a kiss, and Tony felt his tired, bruised heart beat a little easier.

When they pulled apart, Tony pushed her hair back from her face and met her eyes. "This is it," he said, making sure she saw that all of his focus was on her. "You and me. I promise."

She nodded, and his heart thudded at the tears glittering in her eyes. "I know. Me too. We'll have to work on it, though," she added, fixing him with a mock-serious stare.

"I'll break out the toolbox," he agreed, and wrapped his arms around her. His arm was still giving him trouble, but nothing was going to stop him holding Pepper with everything he had.

She laughed, and wrapped her arms around his chest. "I'm glad you found her," she murmured. "But I'm so sorry about everything that happened. Your family…"

Tony swallowed. "Me too," he sighed. "Y'know, now that you mention it…"

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Maggie woke up to a choked-off sob.

It hadn't been a nightmare this time – those she could handle, pushing through the images of blood and pain, focusing on her breathing. But this time it had been a dream. A memory.

She'd been lying in bed, curled on her side, watching soft dawn light filter through a papered-over window. Bucky was there – his arms were around her, flesh and metal, his knees flush against the backs of her knees. It had been warm, and safe, and Bucky was murmuring her name.

She'd been happy.

When Maggie woke up she sat bolt upright in bed and wrapped her arms around herself, gasping at the ripping, aching feeling in her heart.

She'd been trying so hard not to think about it. It was easy to look out the window and think of the forest, or get so absorbed in Tony that she forgot about herself for a while. But her brain was determined to put her through this torture, even though there was nothing she could do about it.

Maggie missed Bucky with every fiber of her being. The absence of him by her side echoed the hollow pit inside her that ate up smiles and memories and hope, leaving her cold.

She used to struggle to remember things, but now she was haunted by memories: the last time they touched, a fleeting graze of their fingers as Steve pulled Bucky to his feet. The last time they kissed, bloody and tearful in the snow. The last time they shared a bed. Their last moment together before the world kicked the door down: sitting together on their kitchen counter, metal fingers interlaced with flesh.

She pressed one shaking hand against her lips and mouthed:  _you are my mission._

_End of the mission_ , he'd said. They hadn't said goodbye, but Maggie knew what this was. It was life without Bucky, the end of shoulder-bumps and grey-blue eyes and laughter in the safehouse. The knowledge of it hit her all over again, making her double over and gasp for breath through her tears.

This was why she hadn't let herself think about it – there was nothing to be done about this, nothing she could do or say to make it better. There were only tears.

She hoped he was okay. She hoped Steve was looking after him. She hoped he wasn't somewhere feeling wretched because of her.

Each hope was like a sharp blade in her chest.

After Maggie got a handle on her tears – because they weren't going to dry up on their own any time soon – she took long, slow breaths and reminded herself of the facts.

_My name is Maggie. I am a person. I am Tony Stark's sister. I love Bucky Barnes. My mission isn't over._

She rolled out of bed and padded toward the window, rolling her shoulders to judge how close her ribs were to being fully healed. There was no pain, only a little stiffness, and it was much better than yesterday.

As she settled in her spot in front of the window, Maggie's eyes itched with exhaustion. She knew the facts, knew her mission, but that didn't change the fact that there was nothing she could do about them. She didn't want to leave her brother, even though she knew that he was grieving for the five-year-old version of her, and sooner or later he would realize that she was gone. She couldn't do anything but cry, and hope that Bucky was okay, and miss him.

A sparrow settled on a nearby tree branch. Maggie rested her chin on her hand and watched it.

_Maybe I've only been pretending to be a person, all this time._

 

When the door opened that afternoon, there were two pairs of footsteps. Tony's she recognized, softened by comfortable loafers, but the second pair was new: clicking heels, a woman's gait.

Maggie got to her feet and turned around.

_Pepper Potts._  She recognized her from the news clippings and videos she'd found online – this was the CEO of Stark Industries, and Tony's long-term girlfriend. She was wearing a dark grey pantsuit, and she seemed nervous. Her blue eyes were round and her lips parted as she looked at Maggie, something like awe on her face.

Maggie blinked, and then turned to look at Tony. He was glancing between her and Pepper, a furrow in his brow and his jaw set.

"Hello," whispered Pepper Potts, and Maggie's eyes darted back to her.

She was beautiful, with red hair, blue eyes and freckles. And she was looking at Maggie with far too much emotion – surprise, hope, sorrow. Her eyes darted between Maggie and Tony, and Maggie somehow knew that Potts was picking out the similarities and differences between them. It made Maggie uncomfortable, and she closed off her face.

"Hi," she replied, and she would have backed up further against the window but she didn't want to seem afraid.

Pepper Potts gave her a small smile, then glanced at Tony with a meaningful look.

"Right," Tony said. "Uh… Pepper, this is Maggie. Maggie, Pepper."

Something about the introduction set Maggie on edge. What was this? He was introducing her to his girlfriend, now? What did he want from her? Her shoulders stiffened.

"It's nice to meet you," Pepper prompted. Her words were low, soothing. As if Maggie was a frightened animal. Or a five-year-old child.

The words were on the tip of Maggie's tongue –  _it's nice to meet you too._ Because it was nice: she could already see how Pepper was good for Tony, calming the tension in his shoulders and bringing a little bit of hope back to his eyes. Maggie knew they'd been together through a lot, knew that Pepper hadn't given up on searching for Tony in Afghanistan and had managed his company with an expert hand. It was obvious that they trusted each other, loved each other.

It was nice to meet Pepper Potts in person.

But Maggie couldn't do this.

"What do you want from me?" she croaked, looking back at Tony. He stilled, realizing that she wasn't going to play along with their pretend-relationship any more. Pepper's eyes widened.

"Haven't I hurt you enough?" Maggie continued, looking right into Tony's eyes. "Now you want to bring her into it, too, and keep pretending everything's fine? I'm not that little girl anymore," she urged, and watched the grief she'd known was coming flood Tony's eyes. "I'm not…" she grit her teeth. They were both staring at her and she felt, for the first time, as if she was in a cage. "I'm not a  _Stark!_ " she said, far louder than she'd intended.

Tony flinched, and stepped toward Pepper protectively.

_Yes,_ Maggie thought. This was what she'd expected when they put her in this cell, not cups of coffee and misplaced affection. Her chest was heaving, and she distantly noticed that her hands were clenched into fists. Pepper and Tony were staring at her.

"The Winter Soldier took me away," she said, her voice low. Tony's face darkened. "He killed mom and dad in front of me, and he took me away. When we got to the base, Project Leader Peters asked me to make a choice. _I_   _chose this_." She gestured to herself, metal bones and super soldier serum and all. Pepper put a hand over her mouth.

"They'd killed mom and dad, and told me they killed you, and I wanted to be strong so I could kill them back." She was shaking. "They gave me what I wanted but they wiped me away, and I was too stupid to realize that they would never let me hurt them. And when I finally got free I'd been a monster for twenty two years, and I forgave the man who killed our parents." Tony took a shuddering breath, still protecting Pepper, and Maggie's gaze bored into his. "No wonder you hate me, Tony. I won't apologize for forgiving Bucky. I've killed plenty of people's parents. I've killed children and old men and women and mothers and husbands and  _brothers-_ "

"Stop," Tony hissed.

"I killed  _anyone they wanted me to kill_ , because I was weak. I'd have killed you if they wanted me to. Or Rhodey. Or Pepper-"

" _Stop_!" roared Tony. The unhinged look in his eye, the same one he'd had when he went after Bucky, was what made her stop. She gasped for breath, not sure what she wanted to happen. If he tried to attack her it'd make her feel better. But she didn't think Pepper would go for that – Pepper had one hand wrapped around Tony's bicep as he stood in front of her. Tears were streaming down her face.

Tony was shaking his head, teeth gritted together. The silence was deafening.

Finally, Tony looked back into her burning eyes and spoke. "You just… forgave him? Just like that?"

Maggie laughed humorlessly. "I tried to kill him every time I saw him for eighteen years after the car crash."

Tony took a step back, bumping into Pepper.

Maggie couldn't look into his grief-stricken, horrified eyes any longer, so she glared at the ground. "I got close in 2006. Left him impaled on rebar in the middle of the Congo. He made it back, though. I kept trying, but when it came down to it… I couldn't kill him. Not because HYDRA told me not to, but because… when I got my head clear enough to be able to go after him, I realized I didn't want to any more. Every time, the memories of him murdering mom right in front of me would come back, but at the same time I knew that I'd done the same thing plenty of times, because of all the shit HYDRA put in my head."

She sat down, suddenly exhausted. Tony stood, frozen in front of Pepper, his eyes locked on Maggie. He had asked for the knowledge, so she was damn well going to give it to him. It was time for him to stop pretending that he could accept her. "I hated looking at his stupid blank face every time I saw it, but I stopped trying to kill him. And then… we were in it together. Hurting people, killing people, being hurt in our turn. He was the only other person who understood me. A couple of times, he got clear enough to remember some things and he told me my name. It only lasted until I was wiped again, but it… it made me realize that I was more than a weapon, just for a little while."

Maggie closed her eyes. "If it weren't for him, I… I'd have gone down fighting for HYDRA on those Helicarriers in D.C. I might have even helped them win. I'm the Wyvern because of Bucky, but I'm also… I'm Maggie again, because of him." She sighed, and rested her arms on her knees. She could sense that Tony and Pepper hadn't moved.

"I know what I've done," she continued. Her voice was hoarse now. "I don't deserve or expect forgiveness from my victims, or from you. I probably don't rightfully deserve to be alive. But when Bucky and I were out, and free, and together… I don't know. Our lives had been too bloody for either of us to judge the other, and together we were… we were able to pretend to be people. For a while. It was nice." At that, Maggie bowed her head. And waited.

Tony turned on his heel and walked out.

"Tony-" Pepper called. She hesitated, looking at the bowed woman before her, then followed Tony out of the room.

The cell door swished shut behind her.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm bumping the playlist again - listen to it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyEFm4fuH4ox7nFl_XoMYkOLrZlAOics  
> or on 8tracks at https://8tracks.com/emmagnetised/the-wyvern  
> Enjoy!

" _Tony_!" Pepper breathlessly chased Tony across the facility grounds, her heart pounding and tears still tracking down her face.

Tony didn't stop. He strode relentlessly along the footpath and into the largest steel and glass building, his shoulders set in a hard line.

She finally caught him just outside his workshop, grabbing his sleeve. "Tony, please–"

"You heard her, Pepper," he said, and the low tone in his voice made her pause. "There's nothing left."

"I don't think–"

He pulled his arm out of her grip and stepped into his workshop. The door whirred as it locked, and Pepper caught a glimpse of Tony's face before he turned away. Just that glimpse made her stomach plummet. It was the look she'd only seen a few times before: his dark eyes burned, and his face was haunted.  _Heartbreak_.

Pepper stood outside the locked workshop for far too long, the memory of Tony's face burned like a brand behind her eyes. Distantly, she reflected that the only thing that had the power to break Tony Stark so completely was his sister.

 

* * *

 

Tony went deep into Tinker mode, bypassing his emotions and concentrating on the bright flare of his welding irons, the familiar groan and bend of metal. He went around his workshop fixing, upgrading, and meddling, and hours had passed before he realized he was slowly edging toward an untouched corner in the back.

The corner in question was occupied by a metal bench, draped in canvas. There was a metal box beside the bench. Casual visitors to the workshop – not that there were any of those, lately – wouldn't think twice about it. But he had been uncomfortably aware of the bench and the box for the past two weeks, even when his back was turned.

After another hour of fruitlessly hammering away at metal with a vague idea of what he wanted it to be, he let out a frustrated sigh and whirled to face the bench. He marched up to it and ripped the canvas cover away with a shaking hand.

There lay Maggie's wings: one of them in two pieces, the other whole. He'd put the wings through a decontamination cycle before storing them in his workshop, but he couldn't look at the broken stump of the damaged wing without remembering it strewn on the airport tarmac, glistening with blood.

Tony pushed away the memory and glanced at the metal box beside the bench – he knew it held Cap's shield and the charred remains of Barnes' metal arm, but he had no interest in looking at  _those_ right now.

He turned back to the bench and ran a technical eye over the wings. He'd worked on Wilson's wings a few times over the past few years, but these were completely different. He could see how the clean design of them – simple gunmetal grey skeleton with black webbing – integrated with the complex cybernetic machinery.

Tony cleared his throat. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., get me a scan of these."

"Already done, boss."

As the holographic scans started to pop up in the air around him, he cracked his knuckles and cocked his head. He needed to tinker to feel like he had any kind of control left in his life. And these wings were as good a project as any.

 

The wings were, as expected, fascinating. Tony remembered seeing in the Québec data that the young Wyvern had helped to design them, so he didn't feel quite so dirty when he admired the intricate systems and linkups. Within two hours, he knew the wings inside and out.

And then he realized that something was off about the scans.

From what he could tell, the tiny compartments built into each wing were for aerosol gas containment, maybe for mid-flight dispersion. They weren't obvious to the naked eye, and Tony hadn't looked too closely until he realized there was something inside one of them. It wasn't a gas.

He cracked the compartment open with a precision knife, and carefully pried out three pieces of paper.

The first one that caught his attention was the drawing – it was unmistakably Maggie, wearing safety goggles and concentrating on something out of frame. The graphite lines were careful and considered, but Tony had listened to Pepper talk about art for long enough to know that this wasn't the kind of portrait that one drew just to take down someone's likeness. It wasn't signed, but he had a feeling he'd met the artist.

He set the portrait aside with bated breath, and flipped over the two long, sturdier pieces of paper. The instant he realized what he was looking at his throat constricted, and his hand spasmed oddly where it rested on the bench. He could feel his mind rejecting what he was seeing, so he focused on the numbers at first: two photo booth strips. Six photographs. Two people. And one orange teddy bear. The date stamp at the bottom of each strip read  _June 2_ _nd_ _2015._ Maggie's birthday last year.

Tony let out a whoosh of breath and gripped the metal bench's edge with white fingers. His eyes were locked on the photos, sliding from one to another with some kind of sickened fascination.

He hadn't realized she could look so  _happy_.

The first two photographs were innocent enough – Maggie frowning at Barnes in confusion, Maggie and Barnes smiling at the camera. But in the last photograph Barnes was – Tony swallowed back a sound that threatened to be a groan – Barnes was kissing her cheek, and Maggie looked… happy. Her eyes were closed. Tony didn't know if anyone had ever taken a picture of him with such a level of trust and contentment on his face.

The second strip of photos made a muscle start jumping in his jaw. In the first two Maggie and Barnes grinned at the camera, their faces mostly obscured by an enormous orange teddy bear. In the third…

Abruptly, Tony gathered up the photos and the portrait, slid them back into the tiny wing compartment, and took three large steps back from the bench. His shoulders were heaving, and the glimpse of his face that he caught in one gleaming surface showed him that he looked absolutely as furious and wretched as he felt.

Maggie's voice, soft and relentless, echoed in his mind:  _Together we were… we were able to pretend to be people. For a while. It was nice._

Tony sucked in a breath and strode toward the nearest suit assembly station. There was construction happening on the other side of the Facility right now. They didn't need Iron Man to help, but it was either this or he started blowing things up, so they could suck it.

 

* * *

 

Rhodey and Pepper sat on a couch in the Avengers common room, watching Iron Man help/hinder an increasingly frustrated work crew on the other side of the compound lawns. Pepper had one leg crossed over the other and a cup of steaming tea in her hands, ever professional, but Rhodey could see how spooked she was. She kept twisting her fingers together and biting her lip, and her eyes were red from crying.

Pepper had explained what had gone down in Maggie's holding cell, more or less, and they'd both tried to get in to the workshop to talk to Tony, to no avail. So they hunkered down in the common area and waited for the storm to blow over. They both had more than enough experience with Tony to know that he was far past the point of reason right now. The only things that could capture his attention were made of metal.

Rhodey waited for Pepper to finish sipping her tea before he asked: "What did you think of her?"

She sighed, and her head dropped back onto the couch's headrest. "If I was her," she began in a tired voice, "I don't know where I'd find the strength to get out of bed in the morning." He swallowed, and watched Pepper's eyes fill with tears again. "She's hurting, Rhodey, but she… it's hard to explain, but I think she's trying to protect Tony. She knows she's hurting him, so she pushed him away."

Rhodey glanced out the window just as Iron Man used his gauntlet laser to slice through a steel beam. A woman in a yellow vest slapped her palm against her face. "Well she did a bang up job there," he muttered. "He's worse than before, now."

"I know. I didn't say it made sense." Pepper's lips twitched into a smile. "She is a Stark, after all."

He thought about that. He'd met three Starks in his life time (four if you counted Maria), and had only gotten to know one of them really well. And when it came to the people he cared about, Tony's actions often seemed to defy all logic. Rhodey pinched his nose. "Yeah, she is. What should we do?"

"I don't know. He's not going to listen to us if we tell him to go back. And I don't think Maggie will speak to us if we visit her."

"Why not?"

"Because she knows we're Tony's people." Pepper turned her head, taking in Rhodey with his metal exosuit and his tired eyes. She thought about the woman she'd met in that blank grey room, who tried so hard to keep her emotions hidden but ended up broadcasting her pain and fear just as loudly as her brother did. She didn't think it was an accident that the long-awaited blowup had occurred when Tony introduced Pepper to Maggie. "She doesn't want to hurt him."

Rhodey sighed. "There's no right answer here. They've both made their choices, and they're going to have to live with them. Do you… do you think we should get Maggie moved off the compound?"

Pepper could see how much he really didn't want that, but Rhodey didn't like it when there weren't any options. "Where could she go?" she countered softly. "And do you want to be the one to pull them apart again?"

He sighed frustratedly. "Well it seems like they're doing a good enough job of that on their own."

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Maggie started to tear her bed apart.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. instantly alerted Tony and put security on standby, but Tony took a look at the footage and since Maggie wasn't hurting herself or trying to escape, he dismissed it. He really didn't want to think about her right now.

He threw himself back into his work. He even went back to the tower in Manhattan for a few hours, to pick up some materials and get some things done in his workshop there. Happy intercepted him for a few seconds, but all he wanted to talk about was security arrangements for the tower perimeter. Tony loved Happy.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. gave Tony updates on Maggie throughout the day, because he'd set up an alert program on the very first day and he couldn't quite make himself deactivate it. Maggie had completely destroyed her bed frame but she'd left the mattress intact, propped against one wall. As the hours passed, the images that F.R.I.D.A.Y. relayed to Tony seemed to show that Maggie was  _building_  something out of the torn up bed frame.

He watched her bend metal with her bare hands for a minute or two, before shaking himself and turning back to his work. He hammered out kinks in the suit's coding for hours until he managed to work himself into an exhaustion nap.

When he woke up, cursing as he realized there was an imprint of a wrench on his face, F.R.I.D.A.Y. brought up the footage from Maggie's room to update him on what he'd missed.

Tony blinked at the holographic footage for a second. "Crap."

"Indeed, Boss."

Maggie had built herself a pair of wings. Tony rubbed his eyes and squinted at the footage, and realized that she'd managed to twist and wrench the metal from the bed frame into a sort of statue of wings, smaller than hers and obviously not functional, but clearly recognizable against the backdrop of the forest.

Maggie herself was sitting in front of the window again, but this time her back was pressed against the warped metal wings. The dawn light filtering in from the huge window silhouetted her winged frame, and cast her shadow on the floor.

Tony was still staring at Maggie's image when the lab door slid open. He scrambled to close down the footage, knocking tools to the floor as he did so, until he realized that the intruder in the lab was Vision. At least he'd bothered to use the door.

Vision had been moping for the past few weeks. He'd avoided all company, save for Pepper when she tracked him down to chat. Mostly, he chose to sit alone and brood over the mistake he'd made. Tony had been pissed at the android, sure, but Rhodey seemed inclined to forgive him and… who was he kidding. He'd been so caught up in his imprisoned sister that he hadn't thought twice about Vision.

Vision glanced around the workshop as he entered, taking in the half-started projects and empty coffee cups on every surface. The android was wearing his usual college-professor-clothes, and Tony's eyebrows rose when he noticed that Vision looked… anxious.

"What's up, Data?"

Vision stepped delicately around Dum-E. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

Tony's eyes narrowed. This could be a Rhodey-and-Pepper-laid-trap.

But Vision merely looked discomforted by Tony's silence. He didn't fidget – the android wouldn't do anything so illogical – but his eyes did flicker around the room, as if searching for a good topic of conversation.

Eventually, he sighed. "I am feeling… at odds."

Tony's eyebrow ticked up. "I hear that's going around."

Vision smiled at that, and then his eyes tracked toward the holo-screen footage of Maggie and her contraption. Tony followed his gaze.

After a long moment of silence, Vision approached the workbench. "I have analysed her enhancements," he said.

Sometimes Tony still got a little disconcerted whenever Vision spoke, expecting J.A.R.V.I.S. to relay some data about a project or warn him that he'd been working too long without sleep. But this was Vision, he reminded himself, a far more complex being. And it sounded like he was inviting Tony to speak.

"So have I," he shot back, and with a few quick hand movements brought up a revolving hologram of Maggie's skeleton, that F.R.I.D.A.Y. had compiled upon her arrival to the compound. And she didn't have to explode any MRI machines to do it.

Tony eyed Maggie's skeleton, the Adamantium on her bones. He glanced over his shoulder at the bench in the corner of the workshop, covered once more in canvas. Looking back at the hologram, he remembered seeing the full-body scans in the Québec base and wondering what Maggie had been thinking while she was scanned. He was no closer to an answer.

Vision was eyeing the revolving skeleton. "The enhancements were installed over a period of years," he noted. "It would have been excruciating."

Tony nodded. "She's lucky she survived it all, even with the serum." He huffed. "Dad'd be proud, a super soldier child. Just what he always wanted."

Vision wisely didn't comment.

They stood in silence for a few moments, watching the gentle blue of Maggie's bones revolve before their eyes. The sudden stillness after the hours of work followed by a fitful sleep was uncomfortable, but Tony realized that this might be what his brain needed.

After another few moments, he blurted out: "It was easier when she was the victim."

Vision didn't look away from Maggie's skeleton. "Regardless of what she was made to do, she  _is_ a victim." He hesitated, then added: "a survivor."

Tony huffed and pushed an agitated hand through his hair. "I know what they made her do. But when she had the chance to choose, she chose our parents' murderer."

He started pacing, his hair askew and his hands fluttering. Vision waited.

"And what's worse is that I'm furious," Tony growled. "At her, at that asshole Barnes, at Cap, at everything. But I think I'm wrong. About  _some_  of it." He grimaced – this was why he was a genius, being  _wrong_  felt terrible.

Vision offered him a small smile. "It is my observation that human emotion is rarely rational."

"Gee, thanks doc."

There was another long pause, and Vision turned his attention back to the hologram. Eventually, he spoke: "Secretary Ross will not allow her to leave imprisonment. I am not certain that he wishes to indict her, either. He has been busy with the Raft breakout, but when that dies down…" Vision reached out to the hologram and exploded it, displaying readouts of the data F.R.I.D.A.Y. had collected on Maggie's physiology. "He is currently gathering information about Ms Stark, but I am sure he is hesitant to pursue a criminal case in which memory suppression and brainwashing are factors. And he cannot pin all his troubles on her, to make her a scapegoat."

"Lucky Maggie," Tony said drily. He'd stopped pacing.

Vision nodded, either not picking up on the sarcasm or ignoring it. "He will likely mandate psychological evaluation and long-term imprisonment. Either way, he will have to release her identity to the public. They are demanding answers about the participants in the fight at Leipzig/Halle Airport. The CIA is protecting King T'Challa, and Secretary Ross promised to keep Mr Parker's identity confidential, but…"

"Yeah, I've seen the headlines," Tony answered, with a wave of his hand. "Ross has to throw someone under the bus, especially after the Raft breakout. Probably won't even tell me first, that no-good secret keeper."

"The world will soon know about the Wyvern," Vision stated, his eyes expressive as he turned to Tony. "They will know that Margaret Stark lives."

Tony looked back at the image of his sister pressing her back against a set of false wings, with her eyes closed. "Hold down the fort for me, would you?"

"That metaphor is an odd form of platitude, and also exceedingly vague."

"Great, you're doing fine." He clapped Vision on the shoulder, then strode out of the workshop.

 

* * *

 

Maggie had half-expected the wings to turn out looking like grotesque reminders of her violent past, but once the metal was bent and twisted how she wanted it, she just felt… relieved. Settled with her back to the cool metal, she felt a familiar sense of ease slip over her – not quite the same as when she wore her actual wings, but close enough. Enough to make her feel less alone.

The doctors hadn't visited in a while – they hadn't needed to – so she wasn't expecting the cell door to open.

But it did, and her eyes snapped open to see Tony in the same clothes as yesterday, marching into the room.

Maggie scrambled away from her makeshift wings and backed up into the farthest corner of the room. With the cool walls bracketing her in, she lowered her center of gravity and eyed her brother, chest heaving.

Tony had stopped moving the instant she started panicking. He raised one eyebrow as he watched her. "I get the sense you're a little anxious." Slowly, he stepped to the side and leaned against the nearest wall.

Maggie took a few long breaths through her nose. "I didn't think you were coming back." She was sure she looked a mess, her hair wild from her frenzied night of building and her expression etched with poorly-concealed dread.

"Yeah… about that." He pushed off the wall and strode toward the makeshift wings, gleaming in the early morning light. He ran his fingers along the top of the twisted, torn metal, skating over the sharp edges. He pinched the supporting pillar. "This is shoddy work. Absolutely flimsy." As if accentuating his point, a small shard of metal at the edge of one of the wings snapped off in his fingers.

Maggie pressed her lips together. "I had a material shortage."

He eyed the ruins of her bed. "I can see that. Why the wings? I've been looking at them, they were torture devices – you felt every joint and sensor tear when Panther Boy broke your wing, didn't you?" He waved a hand, not needing the answer. "You had to plug them into your spine. When the wing tore off it broke your ribs, damaged ligaments in your back, burst blood vessels, affected your spine. So I just… why build them again?"

Maggie shrugged, and looked away. She'd spent a long night mentally preparing for spending the rest of her life in this cell, alone. Maybe even getting moved back to the Raft. Having to engage with another person, particularly her brother… it was taking some adjustment. She tilted her head. "No matter what HYDRA did to me, or made me do…" she sighed, feeling all of Tony's focus centered on her. "They were the one thing I loved having. I loved flying, even if I was killing at the same time. They also kept me safe. And when I was free I kept them with me, kept them working, because I still loved it."

Tony cocked his head. "You're a very honest person, aren't you?"

She couldn't read his face, so she simply shrugged again. "I've got no reason to lie."

"Not even to yourself?" He leaned against the wall opposite her, playing with the piece of snapped-off metal.

"It might be easier if I did, but no." She was pressed into the corner, eyes on the ground. She couldn't reconcile this casually honest Tony with the one who'd looked at her with such  _rage_ only yesterday. She didn't understand him at all, but if she had to guess, this sounded like the beginning of a goodbye.

"See here's the thing," Tony said, and his tone made Maggie look up. "I don't hate you." Her eyes widened. "And I realize you're not five years old any more. So, you know… you're wrong. Bet that doesn't happen a lot."

There was a pause as Maggie tried not to show any emotion on her face, but she was too stunned to execute it. Her mouth quivered, once, and then she locked it down. "More often than you'd think," she murmured, and he laughed.

"Yeah, see, I've been thinking about what you said – about all of what you said, actually, and… it's a goddamn mess." Her eyes were steady, watching him. "But I don't hate you. Never have. Well, maybe for like two seconds when you were born, before I actually met you, but that's about it." A small smile quirked the corner of her mouth, before it too vanished.

Tony wasn't done. "Everything that's happened is a goddamn moral minefield, and I'm tired of treading through it. And I'm pretty terrible at, y'know, talking about stuff, just ask Pepper, so I'm trying here, I just…" he sighed, and Maggie abruptly noticed that he looked  _old._ Tired. "I don't hate you, all is forgiven, whatever, I'm working on it. So if you don't mind me getting angry once in a while, or tossing you off a roof or two… can we…" he struggled for the words, gesturing awkwardly.

Maggie shook her head, eyes bright. "What are you asking?"

He let out a frustrated sigh. "Will you just–" he opened his arms. "Be my sister?"

She pressed herself further into the corner. "That's not what you want."

Tony, arms still spread, looked around the room exasperatedly. "Uh, pretty sure it is. C'mon, get on over here. This is like, super rare for me."

Maggie realized she was crying now. "You don't – you're not..." she shook her head.

Tony dropped his arms and walked across the room toward her, wary of how her muscles tensed at every movement. Once they were a few feet apart, he lowered his voice and said: "Look, I've never been any good at it, but… we're a family. I've been through shit, you've been through shit, it's just a big old shit fest. But you're… we're…" seeming to have run out of words, he sighed again, cocking his head as he looked at Maggie. He could  _see_ her thinking, her eyes darting to and fro as her hands clenched.

"C'mon, Maggot," he whispered.

Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, the breath was knocked out of his chest as she sprang forward and threw her arms around him. Startled, Tony held his arms aloft while she near-crushed him, her face pressed into his shoulder and her arms shaking. He felt his shirt dampen where her eyes were pressed against it.

"I'm so sorry, Tony," he heard her say into his shoulder.

Slowly, he lowered his arms and wrapped them around her. She was warm under his hands, and when he felt the hard metal beneath her skin he only pulled her closer.

"I'm sorry too," he murmured.

It was probably for the best that they didn't specify what they were apologizing for.

As they clutched each other in the shadow of Maggie's makeshift wings, they both began to realize that this wasn't something that was broken – that having each other was a possibility.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I say this all the time but you guys really are amazing, you never fail to make me smile and feel even more encouraged to write.

 

After a few long minutes, Maggie peeled her face away from Tony's shoulder and met his eyes. Her small, bruised heart swelled at the look on his face. She'd been reading him wrong all this time – he wasn't searching for a little girl he used to know, he'd just been looking at  _her_ , trying to understand her past her blank façade.

She couldn't help but smile at him, and smiled wider when his eyes softened in response. She retracted one arm just far enough to wipe her cheeks, sniffing. "If this is a dream I'm going to be so pissed off," she said.

"I get that a lot," Tony smirked.

"That's a weird thing to say to your sister."

He frowned. "Yeah, you're right." He shook himself. "We can work on it."

Maggie smiled again, her heart glowing, and then experimentally knocked her elbow into his chest. She very pointedly did not think about where she'd learned that kind of casual friendly gesture. "Sounds alright to me." They released each other, and she glanced down to smooth down her pale grey scrubs. When she looked up, Tony was still looking at her with that warm look on his face.

"So what next?" she asked, cocking her head. "Is this the part where you 'throw me off a roof or two', or…?"

He huffed a laugh. "Nah." He glanced over his shoulder at the wings, and then looked around at the state of her room: metal shards everywhere, the mattress propped against the wall, the small gifts from him shoved into the corner where she couldn't enjoy them. Finally, Tony looked back at her and sighed. "Let's get out of here."

 

It turns out all Maggie needed to leave her cell was to have a willing escort, and the same 'hi-tech LoJack' bracelet that had immobilized her in Siberia. When Tony brought out the unassuming metal band she stared at it for a few moments, heart pounding, before she silently took it from him and slipped it onto her wrist. The band tightened around her arm and the light blinked green.

And then her cell door slid open. And  _stayed_ open. Tony raised an eyebrow at her when she hesitated to follow him through.

"Having second thoughts, jailbird?"

Maggie touched the bracelet on her wrist. "Are you sure you're allowed to do this?"

He snorted. "You want me to check with the hall monitor?"

She leveled him with a look.

"Fine," he sighed. "Look, Ross gets regular reports on just how much not-escaping you're doing, and so far he's very pleased with your progress. And for now, what he doesn't know won't hurt him. Probably. I don't know, are you planning on busting out and hunting down Ross?"

Maggie pretended to consider it as she took a breath and stepped through her cell door. She let out the breath when no alarms blared and no guards came running. In fact, the corridor outside her cell – white walls, shiny black floor – was completely empty. "Not just yet," she said.

"Well, keep me posted," he replied. He started walking down the corridor, and Maggie fell into step beside him. At the end of the corridor, a huge window offered a view of a wide, green lawn dotted with trees. "Anyway, let's do the tour."

 

* * *

 

The Avengers Facility was  _cool_.

Maggie had been in plenty of bases and facilities throughout her life, but HYDRA had always had a propensity for sinister-looking underground bunkers and ominous fortresses. The compound her brother and his friends had built felt like a workplace, and a home. Gleaming glass and white-paneled buildings were built around the green grounds, with everything a superhero team could need for carrying out international operations: training areas, barracks, aircraft hangars, medical facilities, laboratories and a residential area for the team itself. The facility was actually mid-remodel, as evidenced by the half-constructed buildings and machinery lying around.

The facility was built beside a large lake with a single jetty stretching out into the water, bordered by a rocky shore. A soft breeze rippled the surface, making the sunlight shatter and refract. Tony explained that the recruits did water survival training in the lake, and sometimes swam in it in the warmer months on their free weekends. Maggie thought that sounded nice.

Being out of her cell, walking and looking at things that weren't trees and forest creatures, was overwhelming at first, but soon Maggie's curious mind was latching onto each new room, hangar and path she saw. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed having fresh air on her face.

She could see how the compound  _used_ to be, filled with Avengers who worked and lived together, training in the open spaces and cooking meals in the common area kitchen. But now, it was like a ghost town.

Each room and corridor they walked into was empty when they arrived, and Maggie eventually got Tony to admit that he was having F.R.I.D.A.Y. clear each area before they got there. She was secretly glad – she wasn't sure if she was ready to be around people just yet, to have them stare at her grey scrubs and her bare feet. It was nice to be alone with her brother, to pretend that it was just the two of them in this whole facility. She was also glad that Tony didn't bring up seeing Pepper again – she didn't know if she was ready for that.

But there was more to her feeling that she was walking through a ghost town – the Avengers' residential area felt emptier than everywhere else, the space echoing with the team's absence. There were small personal touches in the common room: a red tartan throw rug hanging over the back of a couch, a biography of Nelson Mandela with a bookmark poking out of it on a coffee table. They walked past one room with a big table in the center of it – big enough to seat a team.

They didn't spend long in the Avengers' common area before Tony took her outside again, his face troubled.

Maggie was interested in the facility's gleaming walkways and intricate machinery, but she could sense the weight of unspoken words hanging between her and Tony. They'd come to some kind of understanding in her cell, but it was time for her to break her silence. As they walked around the conspicuously bare Quinjet landing pad with the afternoon sun on their faces, she sighed.

"Where should I start?"

Tony put his hands in his pockets and kept pace beside her, his face grim. "You don't have to talk about it at all, if you don't want to."

Her smile was thin, but it was there. She knew so much about Tony's life, and he barely knew anything about hers - she'd hidden it from him. "If you don't mind hearing it," she said, "I'd like to talk about it."

"Alright then."

So Maggie told him. She told him about her arrival at the base in Québec twenty five years ago, what she could remember of it, about the blue serum and the Project Leader and the teams of scientists who tested her brain and body. She told him about how the serum burned, and how she'd hesitated on the way into the room with the chair. She told him about her enhancements, about the Wyvern Project, the Siberian base, the Red Room. The final showdown between Peters and Karpov, and how Borya had tried to kill her. How Karpov had gotten away.

It felt strange telling it all as a cohesive, chronological story. The memories had come back in bits and pieces over the past two years, and she'd relayed them to Bucky, but never in order. It helped her to make sense of the residual pain that echoed in those memories.

Tony asked questions. He asked about the installation of her wing moorings, and Maggie told him in detail what Marino and Chief Scientist Sanders had done to her. She told him about how she'd been made to lie still on a metal table for twenty seven hours, waiting for her body to heal around the metal. When Tony's face darkened, she gave him a small smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"I designed the wings," she murmured, as they strode down a corridor. "I designed the metal supports in my body. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway."

"Did you ever have the option to say no?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

She bowed her head and continued her story.

It was painful, but Maggie reflected that though she'd been talking to Tony over the past two weeks, it was only now that she really felt like they were saying anything.

After detailing some of her original missions, Maggie looked out of the corner of her eye at Tony. He looked disturbed, with his hands buried in his pockets and his gaze fixed, unseeing, on the ground, but he was listening intently. "Did you ever meet Alexander Pierce?"

His face went dark. "Yeah." He glanced up and met her eyes.

She swallowed. "He visited me for the first time when I was twelve years old." Her fist clenched at the memory of his calm, calculating blue eyes. "He said I looked like dad."

Tony flinched. "He said that?"

She nodded. "Well, he said 'she looks like Howard'. I didn't know what he meant, and I didn't care. I wasn't programmed to care." She gritted her teeth. "After the Project Leader died, I took most of my missions directly from Pierce. He was… cold. I don't think he ever saw me as anything but a weapon."

Tony's face was white. "Jesus Christ. I know it's…" he swallowed. "I know it's nowhere near the same thing, but… do you remember Obie?"

She nodded, frowning. "Sort of. He died in a plane accident, didn't he?"

He ran a hand over his face. "Uh, no. I sort of… killed him." When he caught a glimpse of her wide eyes he made a quelling gesture. "Turns out he paid the Ten Rings to kidnap me in Afghanistan. He was selling Stark weapons to terrorists."

Maggie had to stop walking, because she was too busy staring at Tony to focus on where her feet were going. They were in the middle of a large training hall with floor-to-ceiling windows. She barely remembered Obie, but she remembered reading about how he had run the company while Tony couldn't, been a supporting figure in Tony's life. She recalled the press conference after Tony's escape from Afghanistan, where he'd seemed so wounded and changed, and her fingers curled into fists.

Tony stopped walking as well. "Anyway, when I got back he tried to kick me out of the company, then he ended up taking the arc reactor out of my chest, using it to power a knock-off armored suit, and trying to kill Pepper, and me, and a whole bunch of other people. So, y'know. I exploded an arc reactor on him. Well, technically Pepper did."

Maggie blinked at him, shock written across her face. Eventually, she composed herself enough to say: "Well. Good."

He half-smiled. "Anyway, the reason I brought it up was that what you said… cold, seeing people as weapons… it reminds me of Obie."

She swallowed. "I'm sorry."

He waved a hand. "I had one crazy guy trying to use me, you had like a million." He led her out of the training hall, and they strolled across the lawn. "What was the Project Leader like?" he asked, expression guarded.

Maggie sighed. She'd told him a little about the Project Leader, but it had mostly been in the context of what the man had said or done. She'd described Chief Scientist Sanders and Marino in more detail, and of course Tony had noticed.

She sorted through her memories, ignoring the way her heartbeat instinctively picked up. "From what I understand," she began carefully, "he didn't care about where he was from. He was born in Russia, but he'd cast off any kind of national ties he had, even going so far as changing his name from Petrov to Peters. He only thought about the world, and how HYDRA could control it." Tony was listening, but she knew that wasn't really what he'd been asking. She looked down at her feet, bare on the ground, and reminded herself that she was years away from the Project Leader and the things he'd done.

"I think he was… proud of me, in his way." She swallowed past a sickened feeling that rose at the words. "He liked that his project had succeeded, that I was better than every other weapon. Sometimes, I think he pretended, in his head, that we were partners." Her lip curled. "He and Karpov, the head of the Winter Soldier Program-" Tony's shoulders tensed at the name but his face was still open, so she continued: "they had a rivalry. They were both in the KGB at one point. Karpov saw the Project Leader as a traitor to the Soviet Union, and the Project Leader saw Karpov as a fool clinging to old relics. They used their weapons to prove their dominance over each other, until one day it wasn't enough."

Tony's eyes were on her face. She'd told him the bare bones of what had happened, but it had been blatantly obvious she'd skimmed over the details. "What happened?" he asked.

Maggie sighed. "I was killing the Winter Soldier," she said. She saw his brow lower out of the corner of her eye. "I had him pinned, I had my hands around his throat and-" she swallowed. "Karpov ordered the Project Leader to make me stop. He didn't listen, so they ended up shooting at each other. The Project Leader lost." She took a sudden, deep breath. "He asked me to help him. He had these ice-blue eyes, and they were normally so... so cold. Calculating. But when he was bleeding out he looked  _terrified_  - it was the first time I'd seen any kind of real emotion in his eyes." She stared into the middle-distance, remembering the way the Project Leader had clutched her combat suit with bloody hands. "He died in my arms."

Tony watched the anger and disgust play over Maggie's face, and let her process in silence for a few moments. "Do you think he ever cared about you?"

Her face twisted. "I think he loved me," she murmured. "But not me, not Maggie. He loved the Wyvern: his faceless, efficient weapon."

They were walking towards the science section now, and the air in the shadow of the building was cool. Maggie fought a shiver.

"And you?" Tony asked softly.

She stopped walking and turned to face him, holding his gaze. "I wish I had been the one to kill him."

He ran his eyes over her determined expression, and let out a short breath of a laugh. "Join the club."

She tilted her head, considering. "But the Project Leader –  _Michael Peters_ – is dead. Marino is dead. Sanders is dead. Pierce is dead. It's not… I lived that life, I obeyed those people and carried out their missions, but they don't matter anymore," she urged. "I'm free."

He eyed her. "Everyone who hurt you is dead, huh?"

The unspoken meaning hung between them.

Maggie sighed, and met his eyes. "I'm done with revenge," she said. "HYDRA is behind me, Tony. I decided a while ago that HYDRA wouldn't have any more power over me – now I'm just living."

He nodded at her and they fell into step again, but she could see that Tony wasn't at that point yet. He was still hurting and betrayed. But she could also see that he loved her, that he might not understand her choices but he respected them.

It was a huge, miraculous surprise, and it took her breath away.

 

* * *

 

They ducked into a kitchenette after a few hours of wandering around, and Maggie poked around the cupboards while Tony made them both a cup of coffee.

She was elbow-deep in a shelf full of different kinds of Pop-Tarts when Tony came out with:

"You know we were at the same New Year's Party sixteen years ago?"

She frowned and turned around. "I think I remember, but I didn't see you-"

He shrugged as he poured the coffee. "I was the guest speaker. I was really drunk, turns out I made some enemies that night."

Maggie tipped her head and watched her brother fidget as he finished making the coffee. "How do you know I was there?"

"It was in some HYDRA data leaked in the information dump, it took me a while to piece it together, but… yeah."

She sighed, thinking of Tony trawling through HYDRA data just for a glimpse of his sister. "I remember. I was there to kill a scientist."

He slid her coffee across the countertop to her. "They found his body a week later. Car accident after a raging party, no reason to be suspicious."

Maggie felt ill – what did the man's family think? She remembered the three women she'd kept an eye on in the Ukraine, remembered the hole in their lives.

"I always completed my missions," she said hoarsely.

Tony was watching her now. "You were thirteen."

She took a sip of her coffee and tried to lighten the tone. "Mm, thirteen years old at a party, drinking underage."

His brows drew together. "You were thirteen, and they brainwashed you and sent you to kill a man. You can't hold yourself responsible for that."

Maggie closed her eyes for a moment. "I've been over this so many times in my head, Tony. A cyber attack  _I_ orchestrated singled that man out for assassination. I waited until he was alone and then I stabbed him in the throat and watched him die. I wasn't even thinking about him, I remember now – someone at the party had mentioned your name, and I was trying to work out why it sounded familiar." She set down her coffee and spread her hands, looking into his eyes. "I know I didn't choose it, or want it. But I still  _did it._ That's not something that goes away."

For a few moments they just looked at each other, the clean white surfaces of the kitchenette between them. As the silence stretched on Maggie felt a flicker of fear bloom amidst the ache of her memories, and she suddenly wondered if she'd gone too far, given Tony too many reminders of the monster his sister had become.

As if reading her mind, he put down his coffee as well and turned all of his focus on her. "I  _know,_ Maggie," he said, his voice low. "Like I said, moral minefield. But whatever you need, just let me know and I'll make it happen. Psychiatrists, meds, a hug, an effigy of a HYDRA head to burn on a stake, just say the word." He cocked his head. "You're not getting rid of me."

Maggie smiled, and ducked her head. She supposed she had been testing him in a way, baring all her demons to see if one would spook him enough to run. But it seemed her brother had a strong stomach.

And yet, there was one thing they hadn't talked about yet.

"Do you miss mom and dad?" she asked, her eyes darting back up to his.

He looked thrown, but she was surprised to see that he didn't look angry. Or at least, he was hiding it very well. "Of course I do," he said, matter-of-fact. "Do you?" he shot back.

She pressed her hands against the cool countertop. "I do. I only have a few memories of them, and…" she bit her lip. "Looking back, I can see that our family had its problems. Mom did her best, but she didn't know what we needed. Dad… didn't know how to be a father." She saw pain flash in Tony's eyes, and remembered that last, big fight before they'd parted for the last time. "But," she continued, "I'd have liked the opportunity to have had them, anyway. And for what it's worth, I think they'd both be very proud of you."

She thought  _that_ might be too far, invoking the names of the parents whose murderer she had defended, but Tony's face merely flickered from grief into a nostalgia-tinted sadness. "I think dad might have had a few choice words about the suit," he muttered.

"Brilliant," Maggie suggested. "Ingenious, a pinnacle of human invention." She tilted her head. "Gaudy."

He snorted. " _Gaudy_?"

She shrugged. "Red and gold? It's not subtle."

"It has a stealth mode."

"When's the last time you used it on stealth mode?" she challenged, picking up her coffee again and taking a sip.

He opened his mouth, and then closed it. "Wait, let's go back to when you were complimenting me."

"Okay," she said, tapping her mug thoughtfully. "Let's talk about the beard, then: at what point in your life did you come across that–" she made a waving gesture at his chin– "geometric assemblage, and decide 'hey, I'd like that on my face for the rest of eternity'?"

 

It took Tony a little while to get over the shock of his little sister teasing him, but he rallied himself soon enough and they bickered back and forth as they walked to what he labelled 'the last stop on the tour'. F.R.I.D.A.Y. cleared the way there, instructing all staff and visitors to  _kindly vacate the area immediately_.

They approached a set of frosted glass doors, and Maggie shot a questioning look at Tony.

"Would you mind opening the workshop, F.R.I.D.A.Y?" he said, and suddenly the glass doors and walls became clear, revealing a huge room filled with machines, computers, workbenches, assembly stations, robots, and dozens of other things that made Maggie's heart pound with excitement and her mouth drop open. The space was clearly functional, but it was sleek and elegant in a way that she didn't know a workshop could be. It was all steel, glass and concrete, smooth lines and hard angles. At first glance she saw at least four machines that were clearly custom built, and she instantly wanted to get her hands on them. With a whir, the glass doors slid open.

Tony laughed at her poleaxed expression. "C'mon, Maggot, you can't stand there and stare all day." He put his hand on her shoulder and propelled her through the doors.

The glazed floor was cool under Maggie's feet, and she found herself turning around to get the full spectacle. "This is  _all yours_?" she breathed, running her fingers along the edge of a machine like nothing she'd ever encountered before, that she thought  _might_ be a laser scanner/3D printer hybrid on steroids.

"You might have heard that I'm kind of a successful businessman around these parts," Tony said with a grin.

She raised an eyebrow. "Well from what I hear, Pepper's the one who actually does the business."

"Okay,  _wow_ , you're uninvited." But he merely cast her a dirty look, and then with a quick gesture threw up blue holographic lights across the workshop – Maggie glanced around and saw that the holographic overlay showed readouts about each machine and project displayed, with blueprints, specifications, and progress reports. She hustled to a project that looked like some kind of cannon to be fitted to the Iron Man armor, and hesitantly reached out to manipulate the holographic overlay with her fingers. It responded instantly, revolving and highlighting the circuitry behind the panels.

Something on the other side of the workshop beeped, and Maggie looked up from her inspection of the cannon.

" _Dum-E_?"

With a gasp Maggie bounded across the workshop to the clawed robot, her eyes round. Dum-E looked different than she remembered, but he squealed as he spotted her approaching, and lifted his three-pronged claw to grab at her face. She ducked the claw and ran her fingers across the robot's sleek black casing, along the rubber-encased wires and over the plating that read  _DUM-E_ in white block letters.

"Dum-E!" She exclaimed again, straightening and laughing as the robot made a 'grabby-hands' gesture right in front of her face. She was willing to bet he didn't have that reaction to any random visitor to the workshop, and the idea that Dum-E  _remembered_ her made her eyes well with tears. "Oh my gosh, he looks so different!"

Tony had followed Maggie across the lab, and was watching her marvel over his robot with an unreadable emotion in his eyes. "Well I blew him up a few times, but he's just as stupid as ever."

Maggie beamed at Tony and then back at the robot, feeling a bit off-kilter as she realized that in her fuzzy memories of Dum-E she was usually looking up at his long arm and inquisitive claw, instead of being about the same height. "You beautiful, beautiful robot," she smiled, reaching out to touch the rubber grips of his claw. Dum-E beeped at her and grabbed her hand.

She felt a little awkward about the rush of emotion she felt for a machine, but something about the little trills and beeps Dum-E was making called to the part of her that remembered what it was like to be a little girl, running around the workshop floor and causing trouble.

When she looked back at Tony, she was startled to see that his eyes were glistening as he watched his sister and his robot reunite. He noticed her looking though, and hurriedly composed his face. "I made another one, too," he said, whirling around. Maggie suddenly noticed that another robot, remarkably similar to Dum-E but maybe a little larger, had rolled up to Tony's shoulder. "This one's called U," he explained, and the robot nodded its claw at her.

Maggie managed to wriggle away from Dum-E, who was plucking her clothes and trying to keep her attention focused on him, and went over to formally shake hands with U. The robot took her hand carefully, its rubber grips a light pressure on her skin. Dum-E let out a loud bleep and tried to roll around the workbench to get to her.

"Y'know," Tony reflected as Dum-E succeeded in his quest for Maggie's attention, trilling as she ducked her head to look at his wiring, "I figure you and Dum-E are about the same age. I was building him the day you were born."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, and when he was built and you were a little older, I couldn't get you to leave him alone. Or get him to leave you alone, to be honest," he noted, as Dum-E grabbed the hem of Maggie's shirt and tugged her away from U, who was inspecting her bare feet. "I guess entities with similar IQ levels flock together, and all that."

Maggie beamed at the affectionate robot and patted his claw's hinge. "I remember he was my friend."

Tony sighed. "Yeah. I remember that too."

 

* * *

 

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the workshop – Tony offered sarcastic commentary as Maggie jumped from one machine or project to another, trailing two beeping robots behind her. He'd been telling her about his current projects, but it was one thing for him to describe them and another for her to observe them, put her hands on the moving parts and poke through the wiring. She did notice that Tony was avoiding a particular bench in a back corner, but she didn't question it. There were plenty of interesting things to hold her attention.

Once Maggie had inspected most of the things that had caught her eye, she turned her attention to the War Machine armor, which was hoisted near the center of the workshop. The armor's chest was exposed, circuitry and systems visible to the naked eye, and Maggie's excitement dimmed when she saw the damage across the rest of the suit. Tony followed her gaze.

"He's not letting me work on the exosuit until he's used to it," he said, voice low. "But he said he'd fly again, if he gets the chance. I'm all about making chances."

Maggie padded toward the suit and examined the work done so far – she could see that Tony had been concentrating on connectivity to the lower part of the suit, aiming to make it operable for a semi-paralyzed person. She hadn't seen the exosuit that he'd had built for Rhodey, but she knew the basic principle, and it was clear that he was trying to incorporate that into the armor. But he seemed to be having some trouble with it.

She cocked her head. "You know…" she circled the armor, running her eyes over the torso and lower back. "I might be able to-" she cut herself off, and shook her head. "Never mind."

"No, what?" Tony followed her to the armor, scowling when Dum-E got in his way.

Maggie bit her lip. "Cybernetics," she said. She gestured at the wires trailing from the armor's boots to its hands. "I became an expert on it when I was a child, I helped to develop wings that integrated with the natural connectivity of my body – muscles, bones, nerves. Obviously we don't want to carve holes in Rhodey's back, but… I think the same principles could work here."

Up until this point Tony had been fidgety, joking, as if he was showing a visitor around his workshop. But when Maggie looked up after her assessment of the War Machine armor, she realized his entire demeanor had changed: he was focused now, his eyes glinting as they ran across the armor. She could almost  _see_ the ideas sparking and churning in his mind. After a few moments, he looked back at her.

"I'm listening."

 

* * *

 

Maggie and Tony tossed ideas back and forth well into the night, using the holographic array to pull up specs for previous work on walking aids, neural connectivity, and myoelectric prostheses. They ended up stripping the War Machine armor back to its circuitry, wielding wrenches, pliers and lasers as they kept up a constant stream of ideas and snark.

They worked well together – for hours they talked about nothing else but engineering and the armor, naturally on each other's level. Maggie knew things about neural-mechanic cybernetic connections that Tony didn't, and he was obviously the expert on the armor. They soon realized that they weren't talking about a repair job but a page one rewrite, and abandoned their tools to focus on the holographic overlay. Maggie got used to the intuitive display as they planned out circuitry connections and defensive structures, flicking designs back and forth, and manipulating the blue light with their hands like magicians. They had slightly different approaches to design – Tony was a little more haphazard than the measured, almost robotic way that Maggie was used to doing things, but she quickly found that she could adjust to his style.

They'd barely made a start on their designs before F.R.I.D.A.Y. politely reminded Tony that Maggie ought to be returned to her cell. They froze in the middle of running a simulation converting bio-electrical signals to mechanical signals.

"Oh," Maggie said, glancing around at her surroundings in bewilderment. One of the glass walls had a view of the lawns in the middle of the facility, and she could see that it was full night out, the moon high in the sky.

Tony looked around with a similar look of surprise on his face. "I totally forgot what time it was," he said, and ran a hand through his already-askew hair. "Technically you're on a curfew, so I should probably-"

"It's okay," she said, and rolled her shoulders. Now that her brain wasn't focused on the holographic simulations of circuitry and machine parts, her body realized how tired it was and she let out a yawn. "It's been a big day."

Tony scratched his head and gave her a considering look, as if he'd only just now realized that they'd been working together on something, creating instead of destroying. The corner of his mouth ticked up.

"What?" She asked, pausing mid-stretch.

He shook his head. "It's just… I used to get so annoyed at you, back when you were a kid, because everyone kept comparing your progress to mine and saying that you'd end up even smarter and more successful than me."

Maggie's face fell, and she slowly straightened.

Tony clapped his hands together. "It's just good to see that they turned out to be wrong," he finished, and laughed at the glare she shot him. "C'mon, I'll walk you back."

"You  _have_ to walk me back or I'll end up a twitching pile on the floor," she grumbled, waving her least-favorite piece of jewelry at him as she followed him to the workshop doors. Dum-E bleeped and rolled after her.

"I'm a giver," he said with a shrug. "Dum-E, leave her alone, she's coming back tomorrow."

Maggie paused in the middle of fending off Dum-E's claw, and looked up. "I am?"

He hesitated. "You aren't?"

She slipped out the doors, casting one last longing look back at the workshop and Dum-E's dejected claw. "I don't know, I guess I thought this might be… kind of a one-time deal."

Tony sighed, and they started walking down the corridor. The facility was lit up at night, making the gleaming corridors feel a bit like a spaceship. "You aren't really supposed to leave your ce- your room, but it's not like I signed a contract or anything, and as long as no one sees you we should be fine. And I don't know about you, but I'd go crazy being stuck in that room, it was never meant for long-term use." Before she could respond, he continued. "That reminds me – since you, y'know,  _destroyed your bed_ , I had F.R.I.D.A.Y. arrange for your room to be cleaned – don't look so panicked, the wings are still there – and for some more stuff to be moved in. No cable or anything, but-"

"Thank you, Tony," Maggie interrupted. From the way he went quiet, she knew he realized she was thanking him for more than the renovation.

They returned to her room in a comfortable silence, striding through the well-lit corridors and across the dewy lawn. When they reached the holding facility and the high-security door to her cell swished open, Maggie's eyes widened. Tony hadn't been kidding about the change – she had a new bed, a couch, and a dresser. There was a desk in front of the window, beside the flightless wings, and an office chair. There was also a stack of grey scrubs on the dresser (the fresh changes had always arrived with her food trays, before), and a pair of slip-on shoes.

Maggie appreciated the gesture, and she knew the room would feel more livable with the simple addition of furniture, but she was determined to not let herself forget that this was a prison. A nice prison, with a brother who loved her as her jailer, but a prison nonetheless.

Tony must have picked up on some of her thoughts, because he didn't try to put on any of his showy bravado as he pointed out the changes. His tone was somber, and his eyes were troubled.

Finally, the time came for him to leave. He took off her metal bracelet –  _the door is still open_ , the part of her that was still the Wyvern noted, but she shook it away – and then tipped his head and said "well, see you tomorrow then."

But Maggie didn't let him go so easily. She took two steps forward and wrapped her arms around Tony's chest, pressing her cheek into his shoulder.

"Oh good," he grunted. "You're a hugger."

"Not really," Maggie said, and squeezed him tighter. His arms rose to awkwardly hug her back. "I'm making up for lost time," she murmured. His hold on her settled into something a little warmer, a little more real.

After a few moments she released him, and sighed. "See you tomorrow?"

He grinned. "It's a d-" he cut himself off, and frowned.

She smirked. "Not a date?"

"I'm trying not to make it weird."

"Too late. You can try again tomorrow."

"I'm more of a 'do or do not, there is no try' kinda guy."

Her head tilted. "Yoda."

He stared at her for a few seconds, processing the fact that she'd apparently seen  _Star Wars_ , too. "If I'm going to take advice from anyone it's going to be a 900 year old green sasquatch. Later, Maggot."

"Good night, Tony."

They smiled at each other for a few seconds more, until Tony made an awkward gesture that Maggie thought might have been a wave, and left the room. The door swished shut again and made a faint hissing sound as the vacuum lock initiated.

Maggie fell backwards onto her new bed with her hands folded across her stomach, and looked up at the ceiling.

Her thoughts were flying in every direction: she was ecstatic that Tony had accepted her, in his way, and she found herself replaying the conversations they'd had today about HYDRA, about her past, about their parents. She was also still contemplating the War Machine designs she'd been working on. And hoping that Bucky was okay. And missing Bucky. And wondering what the rest of the Avengers were up to. And curious about how long Tony hoped to sneak her out of her cell before someone noticed.

Maggie blew out a long breath and closed her eyes.  _Stop thinking so much._

She focused on her feelings: she was  _happy_ , and heartbroken, and hopeful and terrified, all at once. It was exhausting.

She fell asleep that night thinking about the way her brother had called her  _Maggot._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think in a comment, lovely people!


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! This is a long one, but I didn't want to split it up so here you go! Do you guys prefer the longer chapters or would you rather I cut them down to make for easier reading?
> 
> Please comment with your thoughts, questions, and predictions, I love hearing from you guys and it really gives me extra motivation to write. Also is anyone watching Daredevil S3? I'm 5 episodes in and it's AMAZING.

 

July, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Over the next few days, Maggie and Tony fell into an easy routine. He arrived at her cell in the morning with two cups of coffee and the metal bracelet – which she had taken to calling the Manacle, just to make him scowl – and then they would leave together.

They never ran into another person in the hallways. Maggie was secretly glad that F.R.I.D.A.Y. always cleared the way for them, because she knew she must look like a mental patient with her pale scrubs and the Manacle with its glowing green light on her wrist. She did sometimes see evidence of other people working and living in the Facility – once or twice she heard the distant shouts and footsteps of a training drill, and occasionally she saw an abandoned mug or sheaf of papers as she and Tony walked through the abandoned spaces.

Apparently there had been seventeen complaints filed the first day that Maggie was released from her cell, thanks to F.R.I.D.A.Y. politely but forcefully removing personnel from all over the facility as she and Tony wandered around. So usually they went to one area and stayed there – the Avengers' common area lounges, or the kitchen, but usually Tony's workshop.

Most of the time they worked on their idea for Rhodey's armor, while F.R.I.D.A.Y. helped and Dum-E and U tried to help. Tony did have other ongoing projects, however, so sometimes he would sit at his bench and work on those while Maggie played with the incredible, ultra-modern machines he had lying around. He seemed amused by her wonder.

They were in the workshop, working on separate things, when Tony glanced up and said:

"Y'know, the workshop back at the tower has all the really fun stuff, this stuff's all for Avengers business." His face darkened at the mention of the Avengers.

"More fun than this?" Maggie asked, poking her head out of an enormous holographic blueprint of a rocket, which she was going through component by component.

Tony snorted at the sight of his sister standing in the middle of a holographic rocket. "Well the home interface is the same as here, but I've got cars. And the prototype for B.A.R.F. It's stands for Binarily-"

"-Augmented Retro Framing, I know," she finished, with a small smile. "Terrible acronym, by the way. I looked it up when you announced it." His face flickered at the reminder that Maggie knew so many details of his life when he still didn't know a lot about hers. "It's for re-framing traumatic memories, right? I looked into that, it's clever – using the talk-therapy principle while stimulating the hippocampus and adding audio-visual stimuli." She smiled at him, but then she realized something and her smile dimmed. "I'm sorry you had to invent it in the first place."

He shrugged. "You sure seem to know a lot about psychotherapy."

Her attention was already turning back to her rocket. "Well I'm like you, I imagine – it's something I learned by necessity."

Tony frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted.

"Boss, Happy's on the line about an urgent matter that's just cropped up at the tower. You'll need to head over there."

He sighed. "Is it Happy's definition of urgent, or yours?"

"Both."

Maggie looked up. "Happy?"

"Used to be my bodyguard, he's head of security now."

"Because you invented the armor and suddenly needed a bodyguard a lot less than you did before, right?"

"Right." He put down the body armor prototype he was working on and got to his feet. Maggie reluctantly shut down the rocket holograph – if Tony had to go, she knew she had to go back to her cell. Though that didn't explain the speculative look he was shooting her.

"What's up?" she asked, ducking around Dum-E.

He glanced down at his workbench, tapping his fingers, then seemed to come to a decision. He met her eyes. "Look, you can go back to your room while I'm away,  _or…_ I can get you a new chaperone."

"Who?"

"How about Pepper?"

Maggie swallowed, painfully aware that they were both thinking about the last time Maggie and Pepper had been in a room together. Tony didn't seem  _too_ mad at her for losing it in front of his girlfriend, but… "Would Pepper  _want_ to?"

Tony nodded. "She's been…" he glanced at the ceiling, as if looking for someone to drop in and help him. "She's been asking about you."

"She has?"

"Yeah. Somehow, while you were yelling at me, she got the idea in her head that she likes you."

Maggie blinked. Pepper Potts had seen her at her worst, and she  _liked_ her?

"Yes or no, Mag-Lev?" Tony prompted, and she suddenly remembered he had somewhere to be.

"I, uh… yes, okay. If she's alright with it." She shook herself. "Also, that nickname was a stretch."

 

* * *

 

Tony walked Maggie to an office space on the second floor, where Pepper Potts was sitting on a swivel chair, tapping away at a smartphone. When the door opened she looked up and flashed a brilliant smile, glancing between Tony and Maggie, but she didn't say anything. F.R.I.D.A.Y. must have given her a heads up.

Tony made an awkward gesture, opened his mouth, and then closed it. He was fidgeting, clearly eager to be off but not wanting to leave before he was sure Maggie wasn't going to start shouting. Pepper raised her eyebrows, still smiling.

Maggie twisted her fingers into the hem of her shirt. "Um. Hello," she looked up and met the other woman's eyes. "Sorry I said I'd kill you."

Pepper's smile grew wider. "That's perfectly alright." She looked over at Tony and nodded at him. "We'll be okay, Tony, go." When he hesitated she made a shoo-ing gesture. "Don't stress out Happy even more, you know he's still grumbling about the thing with the kid."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Well that's not a very Asset-Manager-y attitude, is it?" At Maggie's questioning look he shrugged. "Happy's swinging for a promotion. Anyway, you…" he pointed at Maggie, but couldn't seem to think of what to say. After an uncomfortably long pause, in which she just stared at him with a raised eyebrow, he ended with: "be good."

"Ew," she muttered.

"Yeah, I didn't like it either." At that he spun on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving Pepper and Maggie alone together.

Maggie turned around and eyed the CEO of Stark Industries, taking in her appearance. She looked pleased to see Maggie, her body language open and her eyes glinting with amusement.

Maggie steeled herself. "It's nice to meet you too," she said.

Pepper cocked her head. "Oh, I…"

"I didn't say it back, last time," she explained, and moved to sit across the table from her. "Because… well, I just didn't. But it  _is_ nice to meet you." She kept her eyes fixed on Pepper's, showing her that she meant it.

The other woman smiled, her eyes warm. "Thank you. You know, I can see a lot of similarities between you and Tony, but you're very different in other ways."

"It's the assassin thing, isn't it?" Maggie suggested.

Pepper looked stricken, then caught the teasing glint in Maggie's eye and laughed. "Well, that too. I was going to say that it seems like it's easier for you to be… open, with how you're feeling." She shrugged. "Tony struggles with that sometimes. Though I'm glad he came and talked to you, and that you both managed to figure things out."

Maggie glanced down at her lap. She didn't know quite what to say to that.

Pepper continued. "Well, at the risk of sounding like your babysitter, what would you like to do today?"

She smiled. "I could eat?"

"That sounds like a great idea. Come with me, I know one of the kitchenettes has Italian leftovers."

 

At first things were a little awkward between Pepper and Maggie – they didn't really have much to talk about besides Tony. That being said, Pepper was refreshingly tactful when it came to Maggie's past – she didn't ignore it, but she looked at her without judgement or pity. Maggie could see why Tony liked her.

In an effort to find some topic of conversation as they ate pasta in an abandoned kitchenette, Pepper asked Maggie if she had any hobbies.

Maggie shrugged. "I build things."

When she looked up she was alarmed to see that just those three words had made Pepper emotional: her eyes were gleaming and she was looking at Maggie with a watery smile. "Of course you do," she murmured.

Desperate not to make Tony's girlfriend cry again on their second meeting, Maggie cast about the room for a change of topic. She spotted a painting on the other side of the room and blurted out: "That artwork, it's post-impressionist, right?"

Pepper blinked and looked over her shoulder at the painting, which depicted a vividly colored forest, with geometric shapes woven into the trees. When she looked back, her eyes were wide. "I… yes. You're interested in art?"

Maggie ducked her head to take another bite of her pasta, giving herself some time to reply. Because she'd just realized she'd have to explain how she got interested in art. And as much as she didn't want to upset Pepper again, she wasn't going to pretend that Bucky didn't exist, that he wasn't important to her. She closed her eyes briefly, picturing another painting hundreds of miles away: a soft blue dress, pale skin, a letter hidden in shadows.  _Stop thinking so much._

When she opened her eyes, she met Pepper's quizzical look with a small smile. "Yes, um… Bucky-" she saw the flash of recognition and surprise on Pepper's face, but kept going- "Bucky wanted to go to an art museum, two years ago. I'd never really thought about art before, but I enjoyed the museum, so after that I read some books, and…" she opened her palms, as if to say  _so here we are._

Pepper cocked her head. "What's your opinion on modern art?"

And that set them off. For well over an hour they compared their thoughts and feelings about different styles of art, talking about pieces they'd seen and pieces they wanted to see. Pepper knew a lot more about art than Maggie did, but she wasn't one of the 'pretentious assholes', and Maggie found herself learning a lot from her. Pepper described her favorite pieces in the Met Museum and the Louvre, and explained why the Mona Lisa was a nightmare when it came to historical art preservation.

Once they'd finished eating, Pepper set away their dishes and then said: "There aren't a lot of pieces in this facility, but I know for a fact there's a great Kusama collection downstairs. I think you'll like it."

Maggie followed Pepper out of the kitchenette.

 

* * *

 

Late that evening, Tony arrived back to find his sister and his girlfriend sitting side-by-side on the Avengers' common room couch, sipping glasses of red wine as Pepper complained about businessmen who made sexist remarks to her face in professional settings. Maggie was chiming in with calculations of how difficult it would be to locate said businessmen and throw them into a volcano. Pepper was a little past tipsy and Maggie was, of course, stone-cold-sober.

Once Maggie had been walked back to her room and Pepper and Tony went to bed, Pepper asked:

"Aren't you going to ask how it went?"

Tony sighed. "I'm kind of terrified of the answer."

She laughed into his shoulder. He could feel the warmth of her alcohol-flushed skin even through his t-shirt. "Why?"

"I don't know, Pep, I mean… we've gotten along with each other pretty well so far, and she's annoyingly smart, but…" he tipped his head back, watching the ceiling. "She spent most of her life being brainwashed by a bunch of crazy asshole neo-Nazis. That's not something that goes away as soon as you escape."

Pepper hiccuped a little, but he could tell that she had her serious-face on without even looking at her. "I know that," she said softly. "But she's a good person, Tony, I think you and I both know that. And she's… she's  _funny_ , in her own odd way, and she's thoughtful, and honest, and-"

"So you like her, then," he said drily.

Pepper snuggled closer to him. "I do."

"More than me?" Tony waited for the old flash of jealousy to hit, the resentment toward Maggie that had fueled the latter half of his teenage years, but it didn't come.  _Huh_.

He felt Pepper smile into his arm. "Well  _she_ knows that Jackson Pollock's Springs period refers to a  _place_ , and not a  _season_." She laughed at his offended huff, and then reached up to rest her hand over his chest, where the arc reactor used to be. "I like Maggie, Tony. But I  _love_ you."

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Rhodey walked into Tony's workshop.

He'd been expecting to find Tony with his nose in a project, probably working on exosuit modifications even when Rhodey had specifically told him not to. What he wasn't expecting was to walk in just as a repulsor blast scorched across the workshop, knocking over a row of shelves in an ear-splitting  _crash_. Rhodey flinched and ducked, then turned to see Tony doubled over in his chair laughing as Maggie Stark glared at him from the ground.

She was wearing a silver War Machine gauntlet on her right hand, and her hair was sprawled across her face – the blast must have originated from her, then, and knocked her down in the process.

Rhodey stared. He'd seen Maggie at the airport, and from the med bay window when she arrived, but he'd never really been close enough to take in her appearance. She looked a little like the dark haired, bright-eyed girl he remembered, but mostly she reminded him of Tony – the way she glared, the way she dusted herself off and got back to her feet, disgruntled but determined to try again.

"You should see your face!" Tony laughed, as Maggie carefully flexed her fingers in the gauntlet, frowning. "U, please tell me you recorded that." The robot trilled, bobbing its handheld camera up and down.

Maggie opened her mouth and Rhodey could just  _see_ from the light in her eyes that she had a witty comeback, but then F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted:

"Boss, you've got a visitor."

Maggie's head jerked up and her eyes widened at the sight of him in the doorway. Tony looked over his shoulder.

"Oh hey, Rhodey, what's up?"

Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "' _What's up'_?"

Maggie cleared her throat, eyes fixed on him. "Hi."

He glanced back at her. She was watching his face closely for any kind of reaction, her body language hyper-focused and anxious. She'd been annoyed before she noticed him, but at least she'd seemed at ease, with laughter in her eyes. Now, just with his presence, he'd made her tense up and close off.

"Hi," he replied. He'd intended it to sound encouraging, and it must have worked because the tightness around her eyes loosened a little.

She tucked her hair behind her ear, still watching him, and carefully pulled the War Machine gauntlet off her hand. "Um, this might be a bit soon, but…" she backed up a few steps, then crouched to retrieve something from a shelf beside Tony's workbench. She straightened, holding what looked like a metal sheet, and flashed a nervous smile. "I was just about to put this up."

It was a simple steel plate, about three feet in length, and it had a single word burned into it.  _Antirhodos._

Tony burst out laughing again. Rhodey's mouth dropped open. "Seriously? You remember  _that_?"

Maggie smiled shyly. "Of course I do. I remember I was kind of jealous of you, actually. It's why I said it in the first place."

Tony stopped laughing, and Rhodey blinked.  _Jealous?_

"I'm really sorry you got hurt, Rhodey," Maggie murmured, her eyes open and earnest.

He shook his head automatically. "It wasn't your fault." He hesitated, then added: "It wasn't anyone's fault."

A shadow crossed Tony's face at that, but he didn't say anything. Maggie's face softened, and she cocked her head consideringly. After a long moment, she added: "I'm also sorry for kicking your ass back at the airport."

Tony started laughing again, though not as freely as he had before. Rhodey rolled his eyes and walked over to Maggie. "No hard feelings," he said with a smile, and then opened his arms.

The last shreds of tension slipped out of her frame and she accepted his hug, giving him a glimpse of her smiling face before her arms were wrapped around his chest, still clutching the metal sheet in one hand. She was slightly taller than him, and a frown pinched Rhodey's brow when he remembered that the last time they'd spoken, she'd barely come up to his knee.

"It's good to see you again, Maggie," he told her, and her arms tightened in response. She was  _strong._

"You too." Her voice was soft.

After another few seconds, Tony made a disgusted sound. "Okay, this is weird."

Maggie chuckled and pulled away. "So how's the Air Force been treating you, Colonel Rhodes?"

"Not too bad," he grinned, and only felt a small flash of pain at the reminder of another job affected by his injury.

Maggie seemed to sense the touchy topic though, and she changed it. "I looked you up, after getting out of HYDRA," she said. He almost flinched at the casual way she brought it up, but he supposed it would be exhausting to dance around it all day. "Thank you for looking out for Tony all this time."

Tony scoffed. "I'm perfectly capable of looking out for myse-"

"It's all good," Rhodey interrupted. Neither of them looked at Tony. "I got a sweet ride out of it, so…" he gestured at the War Machine armor across the workshop, then noticed that it was looking less like it was being repaired and more like it was being pulled apart. He frowned.

Maggie suddenly seemed to notice the exosuit attached to his legs, and she took a step back to see them properly. He tensed slightly, but she didn't look pitying. If anything, she looked… excited?

"Oh, those are  _cool_!" she exclaimed, and moved as if to circle him, but then hesitated and glanced up at his face. "Uh, can I-"

He rolled his eyes. She was too much like Tony for her own good. "Go ahead."

Grinning, Maggie circled him, running an eye over the exosuit in a way that Rhodey was all too familiar with, after having spent years watching Tony make and admire technology.

"Minimalist, I like it. Do you get lateral movement? What's the restriction on speed?" She squinted. "Why are there lights?"

Tony rolled his chair over. "The lights are power sources, and they look cool."

Rhodey cleared his throat. "That's actually why I'm here, Tony. Uh, you said to come back with feedback?"

Tony's face lit up. "You want the Mark II!"

He frowned. "I thought I told you not to design anything until I decided what I wanted."

Tony opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then turned to point an accusing finger at Maggie, who was polishing the  _Antirhodos_ sign. "It was her fault, she had an idea for the War Machine armor and we realized it could be adapted for the exosuit, so…" he spread his hands and gave Rhodey a beseeching look. "Don't look at me like that, honeybunch, we didn't build anything! Just… jotted down some ideas."

Rhodey glanced at Maggie. "You did?"

She shrugged. "I've got some experience with designing tech that intuits human physiology," she said. To demonstrate, she lifted one foot and extended her Adamantium heel spur for a second. Rhodey stared at the flash of metal, and then glanced out of the corner of his eye at Tony, who had a pained expression on his face. He knew they were both thinking about the videos they'd seen at the Canada base, of Maggie's exposed bone and flesh.

She sensed their moods darken. "… Not that I'm planning on putting tech  _inside_  you," she added, then cocked her head. "Unless you're into that kind of thing."

Both Tony and Rhodey whipped around to give her horrified looks, and Maggie laughed so hard that she dropped the  _Antirhodos_ sign on the workshop floor.

 

Rhodes spent the afternoon in the workshop with Maggie and Tony, looking over their designs for Mark II of the exosuit and suggesting his own ideas, and watching bemusedly as they bickered over their initial designs for the War Machine update.

He felt like he should pinch himself – he could hardly believe that he was sitting in a room with  _both_ Stark siblings, alive and joking. It was hardly as he'd pictured it twenty five years ago – his injury, for example, and the gravity in Maggie's eyes that spoke of a life of pain – but it was  _real_ , when for years he'd been convinced it was impossible.

Maggie was hard to get a read on. She obviously cared about Tony and enjoyed being here, but when Tony wasn't looking Rhodey could see flashes of pain in her expression, and he remembered that she'd lived a life of her own for two years after HYDRA. He remembered Tony's angry eyes as he explained how Maggie had defended Barnes. Rhodey wondered what she'd left behind.

"So does the spider-guy not live here?" Maggie asked, shaking Rhodey out of his thoughts. He glanced up and saw her eyeing down Tony, who was avoiding her gaze.

"No, uh, he was kind of a temporary recruitment."

"Hm," she replied, propping her chin on her hand. "He was young."

Tony sighed. "Yeah. He is."

Rhodey narrowed his eyes. Tony had given him the basics about the kid,  _Peter Parker._ He wasn't happy that an actual child had been signed up to the Avengers, however temporarily, and they'd almost fought about it. But there'd been so much fighting recently, neither of them had had the energy. Eventually Rhodey realized that the kid was going to be fighting anyway, regardless of Tony's involvement.

But Maggie wasn't cleared to know about Parker. She sensed that the topic was off-limits, and she smoothly transitioned back into discussing various measurements and readings that needed to be taken from Rhodey before the armor designs could progress. Rhodey nodded along as if he understood half of what she and Tony were saying, and watched the strange, seamless verbal dance they were doing. They weren't hiding from each other, but after just a few weeks of being in each other's proximity they'd learned each other's limits, knowing when to push and when to back away. Rhodey wondered if this was what it could have been like all along, during those long, lonely years that Tony filled with drinking and weapons, and felt another flash of anger towards HYDRA.

Maggie and Tony showed Rhodey the holographic blueprint of the next War Machine suit, their eyes alight, and his anger slowly faded. For a pair of siblings with so much tragic past between them, Rhodey didn't think they were doing too bad.

 

* * *

 

When Rhodey left, sighing as Maggie stuck the  _Antirhodos_ sign outside the workshop, Tony turned to face Maggie. Rhodey's visit, while it had turned out far better than he'd expected, had reminded him of some things he'd been trying to ignore.

"So."

Maggie cocked her head at the uncertain look on his face. "So?"

He sighed. "I've got some… stuff."

"Stuff?" She could see him struggling for words. "Drugs? Piles of money? Dead bodies?"

"No, you dork," he cut her off. " _Your_ stuff."

"My stuff."

"From Germany."

And just like that, Maggie's face shuttered, pain and shock flickering across her expression before she managed to shut it down. He grimaced.

"My stuff," she breathed, taking a step backwards. She lifted one shaking hand to her forehead, as if checking for a fever. Her eyes closed. "Where is it?"

Tony watched her carefully. "The JTTF impounded everything, but when the case was wrapped up they turned it all over to the Accords, and consequently the Avengers. It's in an acquisitions room, here at the compound."

Her eyes opened. "Can I…"

Tony inclined his head. "Of course."

 

It was a short walk across the facility to the acquisitions room, but they didn't speak. Maggie had resigned her old belongings as lost, forever to collect dust in someone's impound. She hadn't thought they would be  _here._ She supposed her things, few as they were, wouldn't have seemed very important to anyone else.

As they walked along a footpath outside, Maggie felt the back of her scalp prickle and looked over her shoulder to see a group of people looking out a nearby window at her. She couldn't make the details of their faces out, but their scrutiny felt like a brand. She ducked her head.

Tony followed her gaze back to the facility windows, then lifted his watch. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., what happened to the lights out protocol?"

Maggie looked back over her shoulder just in time to see the window in question ripple and darken, cutting off all sight.

"My apologies, boss," came F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice from the watch.

They made it to the administration building, and as they stepped inside the sudden lack of sunshine on the back of Maggie's neck made her shiver.

After a few turns down gleaming corridors, they came to a door labelled  _Acquisitions._ Part of Maggie was concerned about operational security when things were labelled so clearly, but she had no doubt that there was security in these walls and doors that even she might not be able to crack.

The room itself, once F.R.I.D.A.Y. gave them access, was massive. It reminded her of a police evidence room - she'd been in a handful of those, during her life as a weapon. Metal shelves lined the room, soaring up to the high ceiling, with neatly labelled cardboard boxes on the shelves. There was a single burnished steel table on the other side of the room, gleaming under the fluorescent lights.

Tony glanced at Maggie out of the corner of his eye. "Most stuff usually goes to the Department of Damage Control, but this place ends up with the stuff that's not dangerous or that could turn out to be useful for us."

Maggie didn't respond, too disturbed by the idea of her things being packed up and locked away like evidence or historical artifacts. Silently, Tony led her toward a shelf near the back.

She instantly picked out which boxes had been recently placed: the cardboard was fresh, and there was no sign of dust on the boxes or the shelf around them. She focused on three in particular, zeroing in on their fresh manila labels:

_Wyvern Combat Gear and Personal Possessions. Seized at Leipzig/Halle Airport, Germany; June 24th, 2016._

_Contents of Volkswagen Beetle EVA0711. Seized at Leipzig/Halle Airport, Germany; June 24th, 2016._

It seemed there was plenty of stuff seized that day at the airport, but Maggie's eyes skipped across most of those boxes and landed on a third:

_James Buchanan Barnes Personal Possessions. Seized in Bucharest, Romania; June 23rd, 2016._

Maggie knew what was in that one, thanks to the seizure list she'd hacked. The sight of the cardboard box with its neat black lettering made her heart leap into her mouth.

She wondered if these things would have gone to Damage Control if Tony or someone else hadn't requested that they be delivered to the Avengers Facility.

Tony was leaning against a shelf a few feet away, watching her. When she looked up, he grimaced and said: "Yeah, I really can't leave you alone in here." She merely nodded, and looked back at the shelf.

Slowly, methodically, Maggie slid boxes out from the shelves. First she took the box of her gear, and set it on the metal table. Then she went back for the VW Beetle box. When she went back for the third box Tony stiffened and his eyes darkened, but he didn't say anything. She set that box on the table too, her fingers smoothing along the cardboard edges.

She opened the combat gear box first. It was packed neatly, with her goggles, gauntlets, and energy blaster sitting on the bottom. The combat gear she'd bought from the sports store was missing, and she guessed that it had been cut away from her unconscious, bleeding body after the airport fight. She didn't exactly want the reminder. She lifted the wrist-mounted energy blaster out of the box and dangled it at Tony, raising her eyebrow.

He shrugged. "All weapons in this room get deactivated before they come in. What are you going to do, throw it at me?" His eyes narrowed. "Where did you get that, anyway?"

"Barton."

His brow furrowed. "Figures. I made that, y'know. It's just a prototype, because no one else on the team wanted to incorporate it into their combat gear – they either had something similar, or didn't want it getting in their way."

Maggie could sense the sharp edges of betrayal seeping into his voice, so she kept her face neutral as she eyed the black circlet of the blaster. "It was good, very intuitive," she eventually said, returning it to the box. "I could make it better." Tony scoffed, but didn't start arguing with her like he normally might. They were both very conscious of the boxes she hadn't opened yet.

She was about to put the lid back on that box, when she caught a glint of silver and paused. She dipped her slightly trembling fingers back in and retrieved the culprit: a simple sterling silver necklace chain, with a single pearl pendant dangling from the end.

The breath stilled in her chest. She put the lid back on the box, still staring at the necklace, and her other hand came up to cradle the pearl.

_I earned every dollar that went into that. I didn't want HYDRA to have any part of it._

Bucky's words echoed in her head. Maggie had to bite the inside of her cheek to push back the tears. She'd worn this necklace every day over the past year. She'd thought it was lost in the chaos after the airport fight, and finding it felt like having a piece of herself returned as well. She didn't have Bucky back, but she had this: a physical, tangible reminder that what they'd had was real.

She brushed her hair to one side and clipped the chain around her neck, ignoring Tony's searching gaze, and tucked the pearl into her scrubs.

Feeling shaky and brittle, Maggie slid that box aside and reached for the next: the VW Beetle box. She raised her eyebrows at just how thorough the JTTF had been: her backpack was in there as she'd expected, but there were also empty bottles, food wrappers, and assorted articles of clothing that she and the other car's occupants had discarded in exchange for their battle gear. She lifted her backpack out of the trash, her face grim, and unzipped the main pocket.

It felt like years since she'd seen her things: the beat-up laptop, various tools and tech, false IDs. Her silver iPod was tucked near the bottom, with headphones wrapped around it. In the front pocket she found a small bundle of postcards, a pair of scratched safety goggles, a faded plush toy flower, and her Rubik's cube. Throat tight, Maggie removed the laptop, IDs and most of the tech and returned it all to the cardboard box. She kept the rest, running her fingers over her things as if to remind herself of her own identity.

Tony stood silently against the metal shelves, watching his sister sort through a single backpack that held everything she possessed in the world.

Then he watched as she reached for a box full of things that didn't belong to her. He didn't move to stop her, though, just observed the thin line of her lips and the grief in her eyes that she tried to hide.

There was another backpack in the  _James Buchanan Barnes_ box. Maggie's breathing stuttered as she reached for it, and she had to press her eyes shut for a moment to get a hold of herself. Gritting her teeth, she unzipped the backpack and pulled out its contents. A dogeared, dusty copy of  _El Hobbit._ A virtual planetarium, faded with use. A notebook half-filled with words, which she intended never to read, but only to protect. A Swiss Army Knife.

She couldn't help but smile as she retrieved that last item, remembering a safehouse on the other side of the world, where Bucky had laughed and joked and kissed her, because he could. Her heart wrenched, but she tightened her grip on the smooth metal lines of the tool to keep herself grounded.

She watched herself take Bucky's things and place them carefully in her own backpack, barely conscious of having made the decision to do so. She already knew what she was going to do with the backpack: she would take it to her room – her cell – and tuck it carefully under her new bed. She would pretend that F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn't know it was there, and she would protect it, because this backpack was all she had left of a life she didn't think she'd ever deserved, and would likely never have again.

She slipped the Swiss Army Knife into her pocket, though. She supposed she probably wasn't allowed to carry around a weapon, but if no one stopped her then she wasn't going to give it up. She wanted to keep it close to her.

Once the boxes were put away, Maggie pulled her backpack over her shoulders and turned to face her brother. His face was heavy and lined, but he didn't look like he was going to stop her taking the backpack. If anything, he just looked tired.

"And my wings?" she asked, her voice low and carefully neutral.

He grimaced. "In the workshop."

She nodded. She'd figured. "Table up the back corner, right?"

"Yeah," he sighed.

They left the acquisitions room together and walked back outside, into the sun. They walked in silence, but it wasn't necessarily uncomfortable. Maggie could tell that Tony wasn't ready yet to ask about those two years she'd spent outside of HYDRA. He might not ever be ready. It dug at the part of her that desperately missed Bucky, that just wanted to be  _normal_ , but she knew she had to accept Tony's choices and limits. It was the least she could do.

At least he'd given her back these small reminders of her past, and was going to let her keep them despite the pain and frustration that flickered across his face.

 

Back in the workshop, Maggie headed straight for the back corner. There was a metal box on the floor beside the canvas-covered bench and she opened it first, ignoring the way Tony's tension crackled in the air.

She took one look at the items in the box before bile rose into her throat and she had to take a step backwards, breathing sharply through her nose.

A shield. And an arm.

Tony stepped toward her, his arm outstretched and his mouth opening, but she merely shook her head and raised a hand.  _I need space._

He nodded silently and backed away, returning to his workbench and sitting down, eyeing her from across the workshop.

Once she had control of herself, Maggie knelt beside the metal box and looked in again. There was the arm,  _Bucky's_ arm, its silver surface scorched and dirty. It was torn off just below the shoulder, plating and wires seared away. The jagged end was ugly, broken. It was only metal, but she knew the arm's removal would have been excruciating for Bucky. She knew  _exactly_  how it would have felt.

Jaw clenched, she reached in and ran her fingers down Bucky's arm, over the inter-connected plates and joints, down to the cool fingers, loose and open. She remembered what it felt like to be held by this arm. She remembered what it felt like to have this metal hand in hers. She used to be able to make Bucky shiver by running her fingernails along certain grooves, and she spent another minute finding them. She remembered the way she used to listen to the faint hum of machinery at night, in their bed. She remembered joking with him on their kitchen counter:  _do you think you could convince the arm to run away with me?_

Well. Here she was with the arm, and Bucky was gone.

Maggie pulled her fingers away. The arm was a dead thing now, a lump of metal with no love in it. It was nobody's fault, but she didn't want to torture herself any longer by pressing her fingers against the cold limb and wishing for the man who'd been attached to it.

She didn't spare a glance for Steve's shield, dirty and scratched.  _My father made that shield._

She rose to her feet and turned to the metal bench, running an eye over the lumpy canvas. She felt numb after all the things she'd seen today, but she knew if she stopped now then she'd never get up the courage to pull that canvas away. So she did it, the material course against her fingers as it slipped over the top of the bench and fell to the floor.

She'd tried to picture what her wings might look like, now that one of them was broken. Images had flashed behind her eyes as she tried to sleep, of shredded circuitry and twisted metal, dripping with blood.

She'd been more or less accurate with her guesses, minus the blood. Someone must have cleaned it away. One of the wings was whole – a little singed and scratched, with rips in the webbing, but nothing a quick service wouldn't fix. The other wing was torn in two, and the sight of it sent phantom pain flickering up and down her spine.

Maggie looked at the broken wing for a long time, running her eyes over the frayed mooring connection point, the jagged metal edges, and the subtle gouges that marked where T'Challa's claws had gripped and  _pulled_.

She didn't touch her wings. She was too afraid that they'd feel lifeless, like Bucky's arm had. She'd had these wings for most of her life – they'd seen her through her life as the Wyvern, and they'd borne her to freedom when she broke away from HYDRA. Her wings had seen her through nightmares and heartbreak and love. And now they were lying under canvas in Tony's workshop like a broken machine.

As Maggie looked over the torn circuitry, her fingers itched to fix the damage. She didn't think she'd be allowed to.

She was so busy staring that it took her a few moments to notice that Tony had appeared at the other end of the table. He was watching her with some unreadable emotion in his eyes, complex and conflicted.

After a long moment, his face flickered and then he said: "Aren't you going to get your photos?"

Maggie froze, and met his eyes. For a split second she felt horrified that anyone – let alone her brother – had found the items she'd tried to protect over all her other possessions. Then she felt a flash of anger – was that why he'd been returning her things, to confront her with this? But those hot, initial flashes of emotion faded, and she just felt sad. Sad that Tony had had to see that, without any warning and so soon after having learned the truth about Bucky, and sad at the obvious conflict on his face – he didn't want to fight with her about this. He just wanted everything to be in the open.

Sighing, Maggie turned back to the bench and reached for the hidden compartment in her right wing. She slowly cracked it open, and pulled out the photos and the hand-drawn portrait. She kept them face down for a moment, preparing herself.

Tony gripped the edge of the metal table as she turned over the photos. He didn't even glance down at them, he was too focused on her face. He didn't need to anyway - each image was burned into his mind.

Maggie normally kept her feelings hidden, particularly when talking about Barnes, but she didn't seem to be able to now. As she looked down at the photos a dizzying array of emotions glimmered in her eyes. Her face softened, and her eyes traced each frame like they contained the entire world. Her fingers brushed against her own image in the portrait, safety goggles and all, with love etched in every line of the artwork.

She looked back at the photobooth photos, eyeing those past versions of she and Barnes, happy and wrapped up in each others' touch. A small smile flickered at the corner of her mouth before she shut it down.

And then, suddenly, she was crying; silent tears rolling down her cheeks as she clutched the photos.

Tony didn't know what to do. His chest was bursting with a confusing inferno of rage, grief, and dismay, so he turned around without a word and left the workshop.

 

* * *

 

 

Maggie believed Tony when he had said he wanted to be her brother, so she wasn't afraid when he left. This wasn't the start of another age of them not speaking again, it was just… space.

With her cheeks wet with tears and her lips pressed against a glossy piece of paper, Maggie was glad she was alone.

 

When Tony came back an hour later the photos were gone, no doubt vanished into her backpack, and Maggie was playing with Dum-E on the other side of the workshop.

They didn't speak about the photos or the backpack for the rest of the day, instead slipping back into their newfound rhythm of invention, engineering and affectionate sarcasm. If they were a little kinder to each other than they normally were, well, neither of them were going to bring it up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, I did spend my time getting the right license plate for the Beetle from Civil War. I probably have too much time on my hands. Drop a comment, lovelies!


	49. Chapter 49

July, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

A few days later, Maggie woke up screaming. She flung herself out of bed and scrambled until she collided with the wall on the other side of the room, gasped, and slid to the floor.

"My name is Maggie Stark," she sobbed, curling in on herself and tucking her head between her knees. "I'm in the Avengers Facility, I'm safe, I'm not… I've got control of my  _own mind_." She slammed her fist into the floor twice, punctuating her words, and forced herself to follow her breathing techniques even though it felt like her lungs were constricting, burning, unable to take in any oxygen. Her heartbeat roared in her ears, and her whole body was shaking.

After ten minutes she'd calmed her breathing enough to be able to raise herself on shaky legs, and stumble toward her false wings by the window. She propped her back against the unforgiving metal, and ground the heels of her palms into her eyes.

"Ms Stark?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. had lowered the volume of her voice, but Maggie still flinched. "Would you like me to call for assistance?"

Maggie let out a shaky laugh. "No, F.R.I.D.A.Y., don't worry about it. It was just… just a compilation of my all-time greatest hits, cooked up by my brain to torture me in my sleep." She tapped two fingers against her temple as she sat curled up against the false wings. "Nothing I don't know how to deal with."

Still, it had been a bad one. Old tortures blended with the pain of her wing being torn away, mixed up with her victims and Bucky limp on the ground and Tony's betrayed face. A blade forged in memories that drove right into her core.

Now that her heart didn't feel like it was about to implode, Maggie was calm enough to notice that it was just past dawn – the pale grey light outside filtered into the forest and illuminated condensation on the lawns below. She pushed her bare feet against the glass window and hissed at the cool temperature.

"Ms Stark?"

Maggie still wasn't quite used to the disembodied voice, particularly in her room. "Yes, F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"

"In the future, would you like me to intervene in cases of psychological distress?"

She tipped her head back and swallowed. "You'd do that?"

Softly, F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied: "It's one of my functions, yes."

Maggie closed her eyes, and nodded to herself. "It can be good, y'know. To hear another voice. Takes you out of your own head."

"Is that permission?"

"Yes, it is," she sighed. She cracked her eyes open, watching the waking forest. "If you could remind me… if you could remind me who I am, where I am.  _When_ I am. Let me know that everyone's safe… that would help." She was glad the A.I. had asked, first – it would have probably made things worse if she'd heard a voice she wasn't expecting in the midst of a nightmare.

"Consider it done, Ms Stark."

The corner of Maggie's mouth lifted. She didn't know how Tony had managed to make his A.I. sound so damn  _compassionate._ She'd have to look into that. "Thank you, F.R.I.D.A.Y."

 

She knew that Tony and Pepper had left for Manhattan yesterday evening, for some Stark Industries event, and that Rhodey was meeting with his Air Force bosses, so Maggie settled in for a day alone in her room. As the painful edges of her nightmare slipped away, she stood in the middle of her room and stretched, trying to lose herself in the pull and stretch of muscles, and the unfaltering rhythm of her breaths.

She thought she might spend her day alone going through the backpack of hers and Bucky's things, maybe reading some books. She didn't have any access to Avengers or Stark Industries mainframes when Tony wasn't there, so she couldn't work on anything engineering-related.

When the door swished open Maggie swiveled on her chair to face the newcomer, thinking it might be a food delivery. She certainly wasn't expecting to see a maroon android in trousers and a blue sweater walk into her room.

Maggie could only stare at him as he hesitated in her doorway, his human-looking eyes watching her.

"Oh," she eventually managed to say. She'd known that Vision lived at the Facility, had even apparently reconciled with Rhodey after the events in Germany, but she hadn't expected to see him, let alone have him just... wander into her room. "Hello."

"Hello," Vision replied in his smooth British accent. He took in her obvious surprise and said: "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come unannounced, I should have asked first – excuse me." He turned and was halfway out the door before Maggie managed to jump to her feet and call:

"Wait!"

He did, turning on the spot to face her. Maggie ran her eyes over him, taking in his appearance. He really was fascinating, with his synthetic body, the glowing stone in his forehead, and the obvious intelligence and  _humanity_ behind his eyes. The fact that he'd apparently chosen to dress like a middle-aged professor was interesting, too.

"It's Vision, right?"

Vision inclined his head. "Indeed. I know you've spent the previous days in company, and given that the others are absent today I thought I might… introduce myself to you."

Maggie tucked her hair behind her ears, still eyeing the android. He was obviously hesitant, awkward even, but unfailingly polite. She hid a smile. "But we already know each other's names," she pointed out.  _Hell, you tossed me like a tennis ball back in Germany._

Vision nodded. "Indeed, but I'm afraid we've both had… very poor first impressions of one another."

She laughed, surprising herself. She knew very little about the android apart from the circumstances of his creation, and his immense power. She hadn't been expecting  _jokes,_ or the self-deprecating smile he shot her. "Alright," she said, cocking her head at him. "But can I ask… why?"

He frowned. "Why?"

She gestured at the space between them. "Why come here? Why introduce yourself at all? I'm a prisoner here, both of us know that, and I fought against you and everything you stand for." Her voice was light, but her eyes were fixed on his. "What about that makes you want to get to know me better?"

"Ah," He nodded his understanding, then took a few steps into her room, looking around at her things. His hands were folded in front of him. "I… have put a great deal of thought into everything that occurred that day," he began, his voice solemn. "Though I firmly believe that what I fought for that day was right, I understand that there were too many forces at play for such a plain battle of wills and arms. Particularly between people who loved each other."

Maggie watched, fascinated, as grief and regret crossed his face. He continued: "I have only been alive for a year, Ms Stark, but I have learned that humanity is… incalculably complex, and inordinately precious. On that day we each did what we believed to be right, and it led to catastrophe." He met her eyes at that, and gave her a small, sad smile. She swallowed. "I found myself to be more human than I had realized. And I learned that I must admit to myself that… I do not have all the answers." He spread his hands, palms facing out, looking defeated, and lost, and so, so, human.

Maggie felt the breath leave her lungs in a whoosh and blinked when she realized tears were prickling at her eyes.

Vision smiled sadly at her. "But to answer your question, Ms Stark… I find myself without much purpose, here at this Facility. I am ready to be called on to fight for humanity at a moment's notice, but largely, I am at odds. And I am curious about you." He leveled his gaze on her. "I know that you are a person who has lost much and suffered much in her short life, and after recent events you may have found yourself just as much at odds as I. I imagine we might find some comfort in one another." He tipped his head at her. "Would you like to get some breakfast?"

Maggie reached up to brush away a stray tear, and sniffed. "Well shit, Vision, yes I would."

 

Vision had thought ahead and brought the Manacle with him, so once it was on Maggie slipped on some shoes and they left her room. As they walked through the hallways toward the Avengers common room, Maggie looked at the android out of the corner of her eye. He was… well, he was  _weird looking_ , but she could see how one could get used to it.

"So," she said. "I know you're only one year old, so I feel like I should warn you that most people don't bare their soul to new acquaintances in their first meeting."

Vision nodded. His footsteps were soundless on the shiny floor. "I'm aware of standard greeting customs, I assure you. I merely felt that you might be a person worth 'baring my soul' to, so to speak."

She smiled at him. "Well, Vision, this might not mean a lot coming from me, but I think your soul is pretty great. And I'm honored."

Vision looked nice when he smiled _._  "Likewise, Ms Stark," he replied.

"You can call me Maggie."

In the common room kitchen Vision watched Maggie go about pouring herself cereal. She kept looking at him out of the corner of her eye, taking in the strange shapes on his head and the glowing stone.

He smiled at her poorly-hidden curiosity. "You have questions about my form."

Maggie froze on her way to the fridge. "I'm sorry, I'm being so rude-"

"I know you have a scientific mind, so I am sure your questions are academic, rather than impertinent."

She grimaced. "The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive."

Vision smiled at her again and strolled into the kitchen. As he did his skin  _rippled_ and changed, the conventional clothes phasing away to reveal the form he'd appeared in at the airport: synthetic blue suit, red gloves and boots, and a shimmery gold cape. Maggie wasn't too proud to admit that her mouth dropped open.

"Okay, but how do you do that?" Qualms about social propriety forgotten, she hastened toward him. She reached out and poked his shoulder, cocking an eyebrow when she realized he was  _warm._

Vision gestured to the stone on his forehead. "My body is a synthetic simulacrum of organic tissue and Vibranium, courtesy of Dr Helen Cho's Cradle technology, but I was given life – and powers – by… this."

She stood up on her toes to get closer to the stone set in Vision's forehead, noting that its brightness seemed to depend on how much he was using his powers. Vision, thankfully, seemed bemused rather than offended by her close inspection. "So it's some kind of… power source, from… space?"

"It came from Loki's scepter. Other than that, Maggie, your guess is as good as mine."

Maggie finally realized that she was balancing on her tip-toes, her face only a few inches away from Vision's face as she stared intently at his forehead. "Sorry," she mumbled, backing up and returning to her quest for milk for her cereal.

"It's quite alright," he said, and the stone glowed as he shifted back into his regular clothes. He paced out of the kitchen and took a seat at the table.

"Do you want some cereal?" She shook the box at him, but he merely smiled politely.

"No, thank you."

She squinted at him. "You don't eat, do you?"

His polite smile widened into a genuine one. "No."

"Breakfast was a funny activity to choose, then."

"All humans need sustenance, and I imagine you're no different." She joined him at the table and tucked into her cereal. "Besides," he added, his eyes flicking toward the kitchen for an instant. "I've observed that food serves multiple purposes – it provides sustenance, certainly, but it also brings people together. Brings them comfort." His eyes dropped to his hands resting on the table.

Maggie had only known Vision a few minutes, and she had no experience reading emotion in synthetic eyes, but she knew sadness when she saw it. And Vision had sought  _her_ out.

"Who did you lose?" she asked, setting down her cereal bowl.

Vision's eyes flicked up to hers, surprised, and then skittered away. Such a human reaction, and one that Maggie recognized – denial.

She supposed he'd been brave enough to bare his soul to her, she ought to return the favor. "I lost someone," she murmured. His eyes flashed back up, and she swallowed. "Bucky. Sergeant Barnes, I mean. I don't know how much you know about him."

Vision's gaze was open, kind. "I know every shred of data that's ever been recorded digitally about him. I know he is a soldier, a prisoner of war, a man who has overcome great suffering and injustice. I also know what Mr Stark learned about him in Siberia."

"I love him," Maggie said. Vision's eyes widened, his synthetic pupils dilating. She took a shaky breath, and leaned back in her seat. It felt good to finally say it out loud to someone. "We love each other, I should say. We have for a while. That's what we were to each other, we were…" She swallowed. No word was good enough. "He's my mission." She looked down and pushed her cereal away, her face crumpling. "And I lost him."

Vision's hands slid into his lap. There was a long silence between them, though it wasn't tense or uncomfortable. Maggie felt a strange affection for Vision, and she wasn't sure why. Maybe it was that the grief and regret on his face called to something inside her, something that would never go away.

"Wanda Maximoff."

He'd been silent so long that the words almost made Maggie jump. She glanced up at his face. "Wanda?"

His brow lowered. "She is who I lost. We were… friends." His face was calm, his words measured, but Maggie could feel the real, palpable emotion behind them.  _Oh._ He smiled sadly. "I've never had a friend before, so I couldn't say for certain, but Wanda and I… we are each trying to find a place for ourselves in a world that does not understand us. I understand Wanda, as she does me." He shrugged unhappily. "But Wanda needed… more from the world, I think, than I could give her."

And just like that, Maggie realized why she felt such a connection to the strange, synthetic man sitting across from her. She leaned across the table toward him.

"You know, I grew up as a weapon." He glanced up at her, brow furrowed at the shift in conversation. "A few days after we got out from HYDRA, I turned to Bucky and I told him that I had no idea how to be a person. He didn't have much clue himself, at that point, but I cataloged everything he told me. First he said being a person was all about… about 'crying and vomiting and feeling shitty'-" Vision smiled- "then he said it was about making jokes. We added little things to the list as we went on: eating, smiling, remembering, fighting." She leaned back in her seat, eyeing him. "What I'm saying is, it's taken me a long time to get to a point where I feel even vaguely human. I had to learn how to become a person. I think we have that in common."

Vision's eyes softened as he comprehended her point, and he sighed. "I think you may be right."

"So take it from someone who's been doing this person thing a year longer than you have: when you find someone who understands you, who you care about… that's worth holding on to." Her eyes bored into Vision's.

He smiled sadly at her. "And yet you are here."

She knew he didn't mean it to be hurtful, but the comment still stung. She looked around at the Avengers common room, with its comfortable couches and its haunting absences. "I belong here," she whispered. "I'm like you, I don't have the answers. But I couldn't… couldn't leave Tony. Not again, not like that, so I need to be here. And Bucky needed to leave. Right now, there's no place for us." Her eyes threatened to well with tears again, but she resolutely forced them back, and then met Vision's eyes. "Are you sure there's no place for you and Wanda?"

Vision met her gaze for a few seconds before looking down, and she could practically see the thoughts churning in his head. He remained silent, though, and she knew better than to push.

Eventually Maggie returned to her cereal, and their conversation after that was lighter – Maggie asked Vision to tell her about Wanda and he delivered, recounting story after story of her path to become an Avenger, various childhood stories she had told him, and her likes and dislikes. Maggie smiled at him as he spoke, charmed by his obvious fascination with the young Sokovian woman and the way he knew her inside and out. He spoke about her fallen brother with gravity and respect, and Maggie suspected that Vision was one of the few people on the team that Wanda had spoken about her brother with.

Vision was in the middle of describing Wanda's skill with the guitar when F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted him mid-sentence, something that Maggie knew she'd normally never do.

"Ms Stark, you need to return to your cell immediately. Secretary Ross just drove into the compound."

Maggie's stomach plummeted. " _What_?"

But Vision was already standing – he phased through the table to get to her, put his hand on her elbow and steered her out of her seat. "I've just looked at the security cameras, he's arrived with a cohort of soldiers and he's heading for your cell." His voice was low and urgent as he marched her out of the common room and into the nearest hallway. Maggie's brain caught up with the program and she doubled her pace, half-jogging along the corridor toward her cell. Vision kept up effortlessly.

"Why now?" she asked breathlessly, glancing out a window as they turned the corner. Sure enough, she could see four armored vehicles parked on the main driving strip. Her skin prickled.

"He must have known that Mr Stark would be away," Vision told her, his hand surprisingly warm on her elbow. She was really jogging now, and he was floating to keep pace with her. "I believe he wishes to do this without Mr Stark's involvement."

"Do  _what_?" Maggie asked, as they made it to the building her cell was in. She heard distant loud voices and footsteps, and her breathing quickened.

Before Vision could reply, F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke: "I've alerted the boss about Ross's arrival, he's en-route."

Maggie's cell door swished open as they approached, and they rushed through, just in time - the second the door shut behind them, a group of men appeared in the corridor outside. Inside the room, Maggie offered Vision her arm and he smoothly removed the Manacle, his face calm but his eyes flooded with concern.

"Vision, you should go," she urged as her eyes darted around the room, ensuring that her backpack was hidden.

But Vision didn't move. "One of the last protocols Mr Stark gave J.A.R.V.I.S. was to protect you, Maggie," he told her. "You can count on my protection, whenever you may need it."

Before she could reply the cell door opened once again to reveal the Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross. He was flanked by six soldiers in U.S. army uniforms, wielding rifles. Maggie swallowed.

Ross hadn't changed since the last time she'd seen him – he was dressed in his high-collared black jacket, looking supremely unimpressed by everything he saw. Particularly by Maggie. His eyes focused on her first, narrowing at the sight of her, then flicked to take in the state of her room: the large window, the poorly-constructed wings, and Vision, who was standing a few feet in front of her.

The soldiers filed into the room and fanned out, covering every angle. They kept their weapons down, but Maggie's heartrate doubled and she couldn't help but lower her center of gravity, eyes darting around. She couldn't keep an eye on everyone at once, and it made her skin crackle. Her fingers twitched.

"Stand down, Wyvern," Ross said, his brow lowering. He turned to Vision. "What are you doing in here? I thought this was a secure room."

"It is," Vision said smoothly. "Ms Stark and I were merely conversing. She poses no threat."

Ross scoffed. "' _Ms Stark_ '," he echoed, then waved a hand. "You're not needed here right now, Vision. Please give us the room."

Vision folded his hands in front of him, his posture purposefully casual. "If it's all the same to Ms Stark," he replied, looking over at Maggie, "I think I'll stay."

Tension crackled through the room, between Vision and Ross, and around the soldiers. Maggie swallowed, her eyes darting from face to face.

"This is an Accords matter," Ross replied. His voice was low. "You signed those Accords, didn't you Vision? What is your word worth?"

Vision's head tilted. "The Accords refer to-"

"It's okay," Maggie whispered, and every head turned to her. "It's okay, Vision, you can go."  _Please go._ She didn't like the way Ross was looking at Vision, as if he was thinking of ways to bring the android to heel. Whatever this was, she needed to face it alone.

Vision seemed ready to protest again, but she shot him a pleading look and he relented. His face tense, he pushed off from the desk and walked for the door, watching each soldier that he passed carefully. He looked over his shoulder at Maggie as he walked out, and in that glance she could see the promise that he had made:  _you can count on my protection._ But she also saw that he didn't know why Ross was there, and it worried him.

The door closed, leaving Maggie alone in a room with Secretary Ross and six armed soldiers. She took a deep breath, set her shoulders, and faced him.

He was watching her with narrowed eyes. "I don't think I like that you're twisting the Avengers around your little finger,  _Ms Stark_."

She wanted to laugh.  _What Avengers? All three of them that are left?_ But she didn't say it, and she didn't laugh. She kept her face neutral and silently watched Ross, her hands loose at her sides.

"Right, I forgot how chatty you were," he jibed, and moved further into the room. He ran his eyes over her bed, her desk, over the statue of wings in the corner. Her skin crawled. "I'll bet you're wondering why I'm here," he said, glancing back at her. She stayed silent, but that didn't seem to surprise him. "You and I are going to have a chat, Ms Stark. I believe you're capable of that, isn't that what you were just doing with Vision?" He cocked his head at her. "Or do I need to get a psychiatrist in to evaluate you, too?"

"I can speak," she snapped, her hands balling into fists. She felt rather than saw the soldiers in the room stiffen, and she purposefully uncurled her fingers, taking a long breath in and out through her nose.

Ross's eyes glinted. "Well that's a small mercy. Tell me, what do you know about the recent escape from the Raft prison?"

"I know it happened," she replied, willing herself not to move as Ross paced ever closer, his eyes on her. She felt hopelessly vulnerable, in her scrubs, surrounded by men who wouldn't hesitate to take her down the second she lifted a finger.

"And have you heard anything from the escapees?" he continued. He was holding his hands behind his back, at parade rest, but not being able to see his hands just set Maggie more on edge.

"No," she bit out.

"Well, I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that Hawkeye and Ant-Man have made deals for house arrest," he said lightly. "It seems they decided to choose their families over traitors, at the end of the day."

Maggie fought not to let her shock show on her face –  _Scott and Clint had families?_ – but Ross saw it.

"Surprised that your accomplices aren't quite as dedicated as you?" he asked, misinterpreting her shock. "They saw the light,  _Ms Stark_ , there's no future in treason – they had one chance to come back home, to have some semblance of a life, and they made the right choice." He was just a few feet away now, his eyes focused on her face. "I'm going to give you the same choice, right now. Tell me where the rest of them are, and you'll be treated with leniency. It's nice here, right? You've got a nice bed, a room with a view, whatever  _that_ is-" he gestured at her wings, not taking his eyes off her. "You'll get to keep all that, and we'll keep your name out of it. You'll live safely and secretly, just like you've always wanted, right Maggie?"

She flinched at the use of her name. He took another step towards her, but she didn't give an inch.

"If you don't cooperate, I've got no reason to protect you. You're a criminal – a murderer, a terrorist. You've had the luxury of secrecy your whole life, but if you don't cooperate with me now, I can strip that away in a second." His eyes were hard. "So tell me, right now. Rogers, Barnes, Wilson, Romanoff, Maximoff – where are they?"

Maggie finally tore her gaze away from his, to glance down at her feet. She smoothed down her scrubs. Ross didn't take his eyes off her face.

When she looked up again, there was a thin smile on her face. "I can honestly say that I'm glad I don't know."

His face hardened into sharp, angry lines. "Is that so."

"It is."

He worked his jaw, glaring at her, and Maggie suddenly wondered if he was a man who'd turn to violence. She wondered if she'd fight back.

"Ms Stark," he began, his voice rigid with anger. "Let's not pretend that either of us are unaware of exactly what kinds of crimes you have committed. So tell me, with that kind of record, what do you think should happen to you?"

She glared back at him and opened her mouth, but before she could say anything the cell door opened again. She glanced up, startled, just as Tony walked in. His eyes darted lightning-fast around the room, taking in the assembled soldiers and Maggie and Ross mere feet away from each other, postures angry.

"Hey Ross, what a surprise! You should have called ahead, I'd have set out a cheese board for you." He was slightly breathless but he played it off, waving cheerily at the startled Secretary of State as he swanned into the room. His words were light, but he glanced at Maggie and she could see the panic and concern warring in his eyes.

"Stark," Ross barked, taking a step back from Maggie. "I thought you were in Manhattan."

"Too many tourists," Tony replied, shoving his hands in his pockets as he glanced around at all the soldiers in the room. "Boy, it's crowded in here. You get seasick cleaning things up at the Raft, Ross? Why're you here?"

Ross's frown deepened. " _Ms Stark_ and I were just chatting," he said, gesturing at Maggie. Tony came up to stand beside her, shooting her a questioning look. She met his eyes with a grim expression. "In fact, you just interrupted her."

"Oh?" Tony said. "Were all these guys chatting with her too?" He wandered toward the nearest soldier and reached up, lighting fast, to tap him on the chin-strap. The soldier scowled, but didn't move.

"Stark, you know exactly why-"

Maggie didn't like this at all. Tony was going to say or do something stupid trying to protect her, the idiot, and he'd ruin whatever already-strained relationship he had with Ross. And as much as she didn't like the guy, he was in charge of the Accords and they were the new law in town.

"We were chatting," she interrupted, holding herself tall as Ross looked back at her. "And in response to your question,  _Mr Secretary_  – I doubt what I say will have any impact on what you choose to do to me." She lifted her chin. "So just do it already."

Ross looked at her for a few beats of silence, his brow lowered and his jaw clenched. Finally, he growled out: "Alright."

With that he nodded to his soldiers and they all filed out, without so much as a goodbye. Tony and Maggie watched them go.

When the door shut behind the last of them, Maggie let out a long breath and stumbled toward her bed, her limbs shaky with leftover adrenaline. Tony rushed to her side, his hands hovering over her shoulders without actually touching.

"Are you okay?" His face was pinched with worry.

She nodded, sitting down and reaching up to rub her hands over her face. "I'm okay," she mumbled. "Just… took me by surprise, is all."

He crouched in front of her. "What happened?"

She pulled her hands away from her face and grimaced. "What  _happened_ is that he's an asshole."

"I know that," Tony laughed, "but what did he say? Why was he here?"

She waved a hand. "He came to ask me if I knew where Steve and the others were." Tony tensed, but didn't look surprised. "He called me some names, made some ultimatums. I told him the truth." She let out a breath. "I don't think he really expected to get an answer, but now he knows there's no way I can be useful to him." Gritting her teeth, she met Tony's eyes. "He's going to put my name out there."

She half expected him to panic, but he just clenched his jaw. "Yeah, I've kind of been waiting for that," he muttered.

Maggie caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, and her head jerked up just as Vision finished phasing through the wall, his cells going from transparent to solid in an instant. Maggie jumped, and Tony rolled his eyes at the android.

"Door too far away for you?"

Vision ignored the comment, running his eyes over Maggie concernedly. "Secretary Ross and his men have left the compound. They're heading back to D.C."

Tony huffed and got to his feet. "Bastard, waiting until I wasn't here."

Vision spread his hands. "He has jurisdiction over all Avengers matters, including our prisoners."

Tony looked fit to argue, his eyes sparking and his jaw clenching, but Maggie climbed to her feet and held up a hand. "Don't fight," she said. "With each other,  _or_ Ross. You need him on your side."

Neither Tony or Vision responded to that, but it seemed to sober Tony, and he gave her a considering look. He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Come on," he said, "we can… we can try to get on top of this. Let's go get something to drink while we wait for Pepper."

The door hissed open, and Maggie accepted the Manacle from Vision before they walked out into the corridor.

"Didn't Pepper come back with you?" she asked.

"Oh, she's on her way back, but I took the suit."

Maggie blinked and realized that of course, Tony had gotten here far sooner than she'd expected. "You did?"

"Yeah." He shrugged, but he didn't quite manage to come off as nonchalant because of the way he was half-hovering by Maggie's side, as if he expected her to collapse or burst into tears. Vision followed a few paces behind, completely silent.

She swallowed. "Thank you, Tony." She was feeling fragile after her unexpected encounter with Ross, and the reminder that the real world was about to come knocking. She found she didn't mind the way Tony had one hand still resting on her shoulder, a warm point of contact and support.

He shrugged. "It was that or break some traffic laws, which you know, I'm not  _unfamiliar_  with, but dealing with speeding fines gets really annoying and Pepper gives me this  _look_ -"

"Oh boy, word vomit," Maggie breathed. "I'm really screwed, aren't I?"

"We will protect you, Maggie," Vision piped up as they headed back to the Avengers common room.

Tony glanced over his shoulder at the android. "When did you two get all chummy?"

Maggie rolled her eyes. "We had breakfast."

Tony glanced back at Vision. "But you don't eat."

Vision smiled at him, and Maggie said: "Food brings people together, don't you know."

Tony squeezed her shoulder. "Okay, Socrates."

 

* * *

 

Pepper arrived a few hours later and met them in the Avengers common room, where they had an impromptu meeting over glasses of ice tea. Maggie had calmed down from her encounter with Ross, but she was quiet, contemplating her future – she'd never been able to form any kind of long-term plan, given the circumstances of her life, and when she looked ahead now she just saw a big question mark.

Pepper had been briefed by F.R.I.D.A.Y. on what Ross had spoken to Maggie about, so the instant she sat down she steepled her fingers and began. "So, Ross hasn't given us any indication of what he's actually going to do, am I correct?"

Maggie wrapped her fingers around her cool glass to center herself. "He strongly hinted that he was going to revoke any pretense of good treatment, or privacy."

Pepper sighed. "So we don't really know what he's going to do, but we can get ready."

"I doubt that Secretary Ross will send you back to the Raft," Vision added. "It has proven to be… inadequate for holding associates of Steve Rogers-" Maggie and Tony both tensed – "and I imagine he will want to have you within easy reach." Tony's face darkened.

"And since we don't know what he  _will_ do," Pepper continued, "I'm sorry, Maggie, but there's nothing you can do right now."

Maggie's lips thinned, and she looked down at her feet. She'd never wanted to be helpless again, and yet here she was. Tony's hand landed on her shoulder again.

Pepper continued: "I do know that Ross won't spin this to make the Avengers look bad – after everything that's happened in Germany, he needs to start rebuilding public faith in what's left of the team. It's all politics." Maggie's head rose again, and she shot a surprised glance at Tony.  _Pepper doesn't pull her punches_. He grimaced at her – half smirk, half frown. "So whatever he's going to do, Maggie, it's all going to fall on you."

Maggie nodded, took a breath, and straightened in her seat. "Good."

Tony's hand twitched on her shoulder. "What?"

"I don't want anyone else going down for me. I've done bad things, and he's going to make me accountable for it. Good."

Tony pulled his hand away, and she turned to see the alarmed look he was giving her. "He's not… he's not going to do this for any kind of justice, Maggie, he's doing it to cover his own ass. Right now people are looking for someone to blame – someone who's in reach – and he's going to serve you up like a goddamn… like a goddamn sacrificial lamb!"

Maggie wrinkled her nose at  _that_ image, and put her hand on his arm to calm him. "I know that. And I'm sorry you're upset, Tony, but I  _expected this_." She glanced around at the others in the room – Pepper, looking focused and sympathetic, and Vision, standing by the wall with a thoughtful expression in his face. She felt impossibly lucky to have  _three_ people who cared enough about her to have an emergency meeting about how to help her. She sighed. "I knew the minute I got found, that that was it. The past few weeks have been… well, they've been something, but this is what I've been waiting for. I'm ready for it, regardless of Ross's political bullshit."

Tony looked distraught, his brow pinched and his eyes dark with emotion. "You can't just give up-"

"There's no fight here, Tony!" she urged, then gave him a small smile to soften her words. "You-you're on the good side, right? The heroes. You've got to stick to the rules, abide by the Accords, and you can save people. I'm…" her throat clogged with emotion, and her voice went hoarse. "I'm proud of you, for that." She swallowed. "I might be living in the Avengers Facility, but I am  _not_ like you. I'm everything he says I am – a murderer, a terrorist, a traitor – and he has every right to tell the world about that. I… I want him to tell the world. I don't want to hide anymore." She blinked, and a tear spilled down her cheek. Tony had been shaking his head through her speech. "Ross said I'd had the  _luxury_ of secrecy my whole life." Her jaw clenched. "He's such a goddamn moron. I want the  _luxury_ of finally living in the open, Tony. Let me have that."

He stared at her for a few seconds of silence, his jaw clenched and the entirety of his focus on her. The emotion in his eyes was overwhelming – she wished she could stop  _hurting_ him, but it seemed like this time it was out of her control. Out of his control, too, and she could see the frustration glimmering in his eyes. Pepper and Vision watched silently.

"Okay," Tony muttered, glancing away and pinching his nose. "I mean, it doesn't sound like I could stop it even if I wanted to, so yeah, fine. Why not just… just feed you to the goddamn wolves."

Maggie reached out and took his hand, impulsively. His fingers were callused and scarred, but they tightened around hers. His head bowed.

"Whatever happens," she murmured, "it'll be okay."


	50. Chapter 50

 

July, 2016

The clip begins with a view of an empty podium. Two United States flags hang on either side, and the seal on the podium reads  _Secretary of State._ The room hums with conversation, broken by the occasional snap of camera shutters.

The sound in the room amps up, electrifies, when the door to the right of the podium opens and in walks Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross. He wears a neatly pressed suit, his silver hair is combed back and there isn't a hair out of place in his mustache. He is flanked by three men and one woman, all in suits – members of the newly-formed Accords Committee.

Secretary Ross takes his place at the podium, nodding to the journalists he recognizes. "Good morning," he says, his eyes twinkling. He can be charming, when he needs to be. "Thank you all for coming out today, this won't take long." The last murmurs in the room quiet down as the assembled reporters settle in their seats.

Ross clears his throat. "There has been a lot of debate, recently, about the Sokovia Accords. Most people agree that regulation is necessary, but naturally, there's been plenty of discussion about what form that should take. The Accords Committee is the result of that discussion. It's a newly formed body, unprecedented in its collaboration between multiple governments, militaries, and law enforcement agencies."

He pauses, looking around the room. The assembled reporters perk up, the instincts that got them into their careers telling them that this isn't any run-of-the-mill press briefing.

"The Accords Committee is dedicated to honesty and real, public accountability. In the interest of those ideals, the Committee is releasing the identity of a major participant in the engagement at Leipzig Halle Airport." The tension in the room ratchets up. "This participant has operated under the alias of 'the Wyvern', though the Accords Committee is now at liberty to reveal that her birth name is Margaret Abigail Stark. Ms Stark-"

Ross can't get another word out because at that name the room explodes into noise, reporters leaping to their feet as they fire question after question. There is a flash-bang of lights as the assembled photographers fight to get a shot of the stony-faced Secretary of State. Ross's compatriots seem a little alarmed by the sudden uproar, but the ex-General doesn't blink. He just stares the reporters down, ignoring their disbelief and frenzied excitement, waiting for silence. And after a few minutes of fruitlessly shouting at him the reporters begin to quiet down, because it is clear that he sure as hell isn't going to give them more until they bend to his will.

When the room is silent again, now buzzing with a barely-contained tense energy, Ross opens his mouth again. "Ms Stark was an assassin and agent of HYDRA for twenty-two years, with at least twenty known victims. After HYDRA's fall she became a wanted fugitive, and then a major aggressor against the Sokovia Accords." The audience's tension is palpable, but they remain silent. "She is currently in the custody of the Accords Committee. At this time the United States Government is compiling further information, and considering charges. Thank you."

The room erupts into noise again, some reporters actually walking up to the podium and being pushed back by security, but Ross is done. He nods once at his stunned audience, collects his notes and then leaves the way he came. Just before the clip cuts out, a reporter is overheard shouting:

"Secretary Ross, did you say  _Margaret Stark_?"

 

A press release was handed to journalists as they were escorted out of the room. Most of them were busy calling their editors and chasing down contacts to follow up the story, but they all checked the release for any further information. The text was exactly what Ross had just read to them, but there were two color photos included with the release.

The first was a still from a shaky video taken the day the Helicarriers fell in D.C. Part of one of the smoking Helicarriers was visible in the corner of the photo, but the main subject was the Wyvern: she was mid-flight, her metal wings cutting a sharp silhouette in the sky, and it was clear even from the poor quality of the photo that she was clad all in black, with red goggles over her face.

The second photo had been taken a few weeks ago, on Maggie's arrival to the Avengers Facility. It looked like a mug shot, framing her head and shoulders against a white wall. Her face was blank, and she was visibly injured – her face was marred with bruises and cuts, her lip was split, and there was a burn mark near her temple. Her eyes were empty.

The reporters took their press briefings and got to work.

 

* * *

 

The world lost its collective mind.

Maggie Stark's return from the dead was all any media group could talk about. Stark Industries stock dropped, then rose, then dropped again. People the world over started googling 'The Wyvern' and the details of the car crash in 1991.

People naturally dismissed the reveal as a hoax, intended to distract from the contentious Accords and the collapse of the Avengers, but it was hard to argue against the Secretary of State when he had photo proof and, later that day, DNA proof.

So people dug for information. It was sparse, and difficult to find, but it was there – there was footage of the Wyvern flying in D.C., and in Germany. HYDRA information dump analysts started flagging any mentions of the Wyvern, spotty and vague as they were. The general consensus was that HYDRA must have orchestrated the car crash and snatched the young Maggie. Conspiracy theorists the world over were having the best day they'd had since the day Captain America took down S.H.I.E.L.D.

TV and print journalism posted the released images everywhere. One couldn't turn on the TV or walk past a newsagency without seeing the mugshot of Maggie, injured and empty, alongside the archived photos of her as a young girl. Almost everyone agreed that her resemblance to Howard, Maria and Tony was obvious.

People liked to pore over the few details they had, particularly the photos. There were long discussions of her expression in the mugshot –  _crazy,_ a few people called it. But most tended to use  _empty,_ or  _damaged._ One particularly upset newscaster called it  _lost._

The public reaction was simply overwhelming. With such an out-of-left field announcement, involving complex issues such as HYDRA, the Avengers, the Stark family and the Accords, no one knew where to start. It did not go unnoticed, however, that Ross had said that a thirty-year-old woman had been fighting for HYDRA for twenty two years. It wasn't hard to do the math.

Behind closed doors, Ross and the Accords Committee expressly forbade the Avengers from commenting on the situation - this wasn't about the Avengers, they said. It was about a now-infamous criminal. Ross tried to forbid Pepper from saying anything either, but she sent him a bitingly polite email informing him that he couldn't expect the CEO of a multinational company to remain silent about something that impacted that very company.

Stark Industries had been flooded with so many requests for comment that F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s processing power dipped incrementally. Pepper arranged a press conference within minutes of Ross's announcement, and at noon that day a flood of reporters filled Stark Industries' LA headquarters press room.

Pepper's briefing was short and to the point, stressing that though the Avengers and the Accords worked in cooperation with Stark Industries, they did not impact how the company ran. She stressed that Stark Industries was still going strong.

Pepper was no coward, and she took questions at the end: the first question was if she was still the CEO.

"Yes," she said mildly.

Another reporter asked her to comment on Tony Stark's reaction.

Pepper's polite façade didn't waver. "At this time I am representing Stark Industries. I may comment from a more personal standpoint at a later time. Thank you."

 

Because no one had heard from Tony Stark. The normally press-friendly billionaire was absent, and no one was surprised. Speculation about his reaction varied wildly, from 'he's lost it and had to be locked up in the Raft' to 'he's already working on busting his sister out of prison and building her a safe house on the moon'.

Everyone was sure he'd be hiding in his tower's penthouse, or at the Avengers Facility, or in one of his various houses around the world. A middle-aged man in Florida swore up and down that he'd seen Iron Man sitting at the bottom of a lake.

So it was to everyone's great surprise when Christine Everhart, now a reporter for WHIH World News, found Tony Stark at a rest stop in upstate New York. She snuck up on him with her cameraman, catching him in his 'civilian disguise' – a cap and sunglasses – as he ate a grilled cheese in a booth.

He looked up and scowled. "How the hell did you find me, Everhart?"

She didn't dignify that with a response. She crowded in to the booth and lifted her microphone. "Your sister's back from the dead, Tony, and she's got a long career as a HYDRA assassin. What do you have to say to that?"

Tony pulled a face and opened his mouth, clearly about to snap back with a witty remark, but then he sighed and pulled off his sunglasses. "The only reason it's so long is because she started when she was  _five_ ," he said. He was uncharacteristically grave. "She never had a choice in the matter," he continued. "But look, all the legal and political crap is still getting sorted out. Right now… she's my sister. And I got her back."

That would shut most people up, but not Christine Everhart. "Is she back? Fully? Does she recognize you as her brother?"

"Yeah, she does. She's been a genius all her life, it's not going away any time soon."

Christine's eyes were sharp and focused on him. "And how have you reconciled the fact that she fought against you in Germany?"

Tony shrugged, threw a few bills on the table and stood up. "She once broke my favorite pair of welding glasses by super-gluing googly eyes all over them. I got over that. I got over this, too. Later, Everhart." And with that he shouldered past the cameraman and out the door, climbing into his bright orange Audi after a sloppy salute back at the rest stop.

 

* * *

 

July 24th, 2016  
Research Facility, Wakanda

Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes watched the clip of Tony's impromptu interview on a glass tablet, as they shared a seat overlooking Wakanda's misty forests.

When the clip ended, Bucky handed the tablet to Steve and let his hand fall to his knee, his eyes focused out the window.

He was scheduled to go into cryo today, but the news about Maggie had broken yesterday and he'd been anxiously glued to whatever screen he could find. He hadn't said anything about cancelling the procedure, though.

Steve hated to see him like this – Bucky had always faced his problems head-on, but now there was nothing he could do. Yesterday, when it had all come out and the world exploded with interest, Bucky had turned to Steve with a lost look on his face and said 'she's always been there for me, Steve. How can I just do  _nothing_?" Steve hadn't had an answer, but Bucky knew there was nothing he could do or say to help Maggie.

But now Bucky didn't look agitated, or anxious, as he had since yesterday. Something about Tony's interview had brought a stillness to his features that Steve's protective hovering and offers to talk had failed to achieve.

Bucky seemed lost in thought as he looked out at Wakanda's forests, so Steve took a moment to close his eyes and think about what he'd just seen. He hadn't known what to expect after Maggie stayed with Tony, but announcing her to the public as an assassin and a criminal hadn't been it. He was sure that it hadn't been Tony's idea.

Tony had seemed tired, in the footage from Everhart's interview. Still, it seemed that he and Maggie were alright, and had formed some kind of bond. Steve hadn't dared to hope for that much, after what happened in Siberia.

After a few long moments of silence, Bucky turned away from the window and looked at Steve. "Will you keep an eye on her?"

Steve blinked, and straightened. "I… you want me to-"

"While I'm in cryo," Bucky elaborated.

"You're still…"

"Yes, there's nothing I can-" he cut himself off, closing his eyes for a moment, and took a breath. "I'm dangerous. Steve, I'm asking you… please keep an eye on Maggie. Make sure she doesn't get shipped to the Raft, or get experimented on, or get railroaded by Ross. Please." His eyes were wide, earnest, and his hand rubbed anxiously over his knee.

"I don't think Tony would let any of that happen."

"I know." Bucky ran a hand over his stubbly jaw. "Still. It'll make me feel better knowing that you're looking out for my best girl." He flashed a small smile, and Steve couldn't help but smile back. He clapped a hand on Bucky's shoulder, just over where the remains of his cybernetic arm were covered by a rubber sleeve.

"Yeah alright, jerk," he agreed, as if he wasn't already planning on looking out for Maggie as best as he could.

Bucky's eyes glinted. "Punk."

At that, a technician came out of the main lab and nodded at Bucky. "We are ready for you. Captain Rogers may join you in a moment."

Bucky took a long breath. "She's going to yell at me for this," he muttered.

Steve huffed a laugh. Maggie hadn't seemed to him to be the yelling type, but it was clear that there were many layers to her that he hadn't had the chance to see. He elbowed his friend. "At least you'll be there to be yelled at." Bucky smiled. "And once they work out how to help you, then we can help her, too."

The reminder that Maggie was facing the same problem as him brought steel into Bucky's eyes. He stood up, shoulders straight, and nodded at Steve. "See you in there."

Steve gave him a small salute. "See you in there."

 

* * *

 

Scott Lang's House, San Francisco

Scott was still adjusting to being on house arrest. The tracking anklet was itchy, the constant surveillance was irritating, and he missed being able to go see Cassie. He was also watching  _way_ too much TV. As a consequence he'd bought a bunch of infomercial products that he really didn't need, and also managed to watch Ross's press briefing live.

When it ended, Scott turned off the TV and put his head in his hands. That explained a lot. He did the math and realized that meant the Wyvern – Maggie – had been taken from her parents when she was  _five._ Cassie was eleven, and the idea of her being taken and turned into-

He shook his head firmly. He worried about Cassie enough, he didn't need to be thinking about  _that._ He leaned back on the couch, scratching his tracking anklet, and found himself hoping that Maggie was OK, after what went down at the airport. He'd never heard anyone scream like that.

Suddenly, another thought occurred to Scott.  _Shit. I showed the suit to not one Stark, but two._

He groaned, tipping his head back. "Hank's going to be  _so_ mad at me."

 

* * *

 

Royal Residences, Wakanda

T'Challa stood on the balcony of his personal quarters, hands clasped behind his back, with the beautiful chaos of Wakanda laid before him. But he wasn't looking at the domed, gleaming buildings or the glimpses of airships on the horizon. He was looking down at the courtyard below, where Shuri was walking back from the labs, speaking to her Dora Milaje guards.

She was energetic, talking mile-a-minute as she usually did when she was working on a project, but there was a solemnity to her face that he didn't usually see. He suspected part of it was the recent loss of their father, but he knew that she was also thinking about her latest charge, Sergeant Barnes. She felt responsible for the World War Two veteran, because every day she didn't find an answer to the mystery of his trigger words was another day he spent on ice.

It was a lot of pressure for a teenager.

T'Challa closed his eyes and thought back to the recent news about the previously-unknown participant at the airport fight. The Wyvern.  _Margaret Stark._

He had suspected some kind of connection between the winged woman and Tony Stark, after the careful way Stark had given his orders before the fight, and his distress afterwards. The tense ride back from Siberia had all but confirmed it – the two had been utterly silent, their bodies rigid with wariness, avoiding each other's notice, and yet still looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. T'Challa had apologized to the woman as soon as he realized that she was the same who he'd hurt, but she barely seemed to hear him.

Stark had apparently warmed to his sister since then, if his short interview was anything to go by.

T'Challa sighed. He'd regretted hurting the woman the moment he'd done it, but the knowledge of her identity, the fact that she had a  _name…_ it shouldn't have made a difference, but it did. She was a person in her own right, but she was also Tony Stark's little sister, and he had ripped her out of the sky. He knew this would be one more mark of guilt that he would have to bear through his monarchy. Through his life.

He opened his eyes again, and peered down at his sister as she talked her guards' ears off, gesturing wildly. He wondered what he wouldn't do to keep her safe.

 

* * *

 

Midtown School of Science and Technology, New York

Peter was with Ned when they found out.

It was lunchtime, and they walked into the cafeteria to see every student in the place huddled in groups around peoples' phones. The TV in the far corner was running news headlines. At first Peter didn't think much of it, until he saw Michelle hunched over her own phone, hair in her face as she stared intently at her screen. She usually tried so hard to appear uncaring about everything; the fact that she'd let that act drop was concerning.

"Uh… what's going on?" Peter asked Ned, turning in a circle to get a look at everyone engrossed in their phones.

"Maybe more aliens?" Ned suggested, sounding far too excited about that for his own good. They walked towards the nearest TV screen, and Peter's mouth dropped open at what he saw.

_Margaret Stark Alive_

There was more information after that, way too much – about Margaret Stark's role as a HYDRA assassin, as the Wyvern, as a participant in the fight at the airport in Germany. Peter could barely take it in.  _Holy Shit._

He had to sit down.

No wonder Mr Stark had told him not to hurt anyone.

"What's wrong, Peter?" Ned had been jabbering animatedly about the miraculous survival of Margaret Stark, until he realized that Peter was sitting, staring numbly at the TV screen. "Are you okay?"

Peter blinked. "Yeah, yeah, it's just… Mr Stark seems really cool, you know? This is… a lot."

Ned turned back to the screen. "I know, right? Look at her awesome wings!"

"I don't think she has those anymore," Peter murmured. But no one was listening.

 

* * *

 

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Wanda and Natasha were silent as they read about Margaret Stark's abrupt re-entry to the world, and Tony's response. They sat in straw chairs outside a café, sweating under their caps and sunglasses as they sipped iced coffee.

They'd all split up after breaking out of the Raft, to get the heat off their backs, but Natasha had shown up on Wanda's doorstep a week ago with a simple "you've been sloppy. I'm going to teach you how to go on the run  _properly_ ". And that had been that.

Today Wanda was wearing blue contacts and a blonde wig, and she felt supremely uncomfortable. Reading the news about Ross's latest press briefing didn't exactly ease her discomfort.

After finishing an article that called for Maggie to be put away for life, Wanda put down her burner phone and glanced at Natasha. The other woman was, naturally, blank-faced and calm, but Wanda could sense her disturbance. "You want to be there for him," she murmured, resting her hands on the table.

Natasha glanced up sharply, suspecting Wanda of using her powers on her, but Wanda just met her eyes calmly.

Natasha sighed before replying. "I know your history with him, but… he's our friend, Wanda. He's just gotten his sister back from the dead and now she's about to have all kinds of consequences rain down on her. What happened between all of us… I don't know if anything can fix it. But I hope Tony's okay."

Wanda tapped her phone, pressing her lips together. "I hope they both are."

Natasha cocked her head at that. "You spent time with her, didn't you? What was she like?"

"It was only a few moments before the fight, but…" Wanda smiled at her memory of the dark haired, bright-eyed woman who had promised to tell her a joke. "She was kind. Funny, even."

Natasha smiled knowingly. "I know you picked up more than that."

Wanda leaned back in her seat, meeting the other woman's eyes. "You're right, I looked into her head. Just for a moment, to make sure she was on our side. She was… like most of the rest of us, with a history of pain. But she bore it well." Wanda ducked her head to her iced coffee, turning over her next words. "She and Barnes were together."

Natasha didn't mistake her meaning, and her eyebrows shot up. After a millisecond of visible surprise she smoothed her features again, and shrugged. "It makes sense, they went through a lot together. Were they in love?"

She sighed. "Yes."

Natasha propped her chin on her hand, looking down at the table. "No wonder things got so ugly in the end," she murmured.

Steve had told them about what went down in Siberia, long-kept secret and all. Wanda had been surprised, but she knew she couldn't judge anyone involved – she'd kept her share of secrets, made her share of mistakes. She'd sought revenge for her parents' murder, too, and she knew how intoxicating it could be. There was a long silence as Natasha and Wanda considered the news.

Wanda thought back to that remarkable love she'd sensed between Maggie and Bucky, in their shared glances and comforting touches. "Do you think they'll ever see each other again?"

Natasha eyed Wanda, aware that the other woman wasn't just thinking about Bucky and Maggie. "I don't know," she said gently. "I'm not a fortune teller, Wanda. I only know how to survive."

 

* * *

 

Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

When Tony walked into Maggie's room at his usual time a few mornings later, she was already standing by the door waiting for him. He jumped, but then saw the way she was biting her lip and frowning at the ground. He cocked an eyebrow.

"What's up, Magazine?"

Maggie looked up and met his eyes, her shoulders straightening. "I need to call a strategy meeting with the Avengers."

He blinked. "Uh, well there's only the three of us-"

"It's a matter of everyone's safety," she interrupted, holding his gaze. "I need you to take this seriously, Tony."

He stared at her for a beat, then nodded. "Okay."

He immediately started asking questions, but Maggie just shook her head. She didn't say another word until, ten minutes later, she was sitting at the Avengers conference table with Tony, Rhodey, and Vision. Pepper was back in Manhattan, but this was going to be hard enough for Maggie to admit to three people, let alone four.

She'd requested the more formal space because she'd made good memories in the common area and she didn't want to ruin them already. Besides, the gleaming tabletop and sleek black chairs made her feel like she was actually holding a strategy meeting, rather than dropping a bomb that threatened everyone's lives.

"Okay," Tony said, "meeting called, Avengers assembled, whatever." He gestured at the room. "What's so urgent, Maggot?"

Maggie lifted her eyes and looked around. It was jarring to realize that yes, this was all that remained of the Avengers – two long-time best friends and their android pal, each broken in their own way. But she would take what she could get.

She took a sharp breath through her nose. "There's something I haven't told you."

Vision and Rhodey leaned forward, but Tony just narrowed his eyes. "What, did Ross also say he was going to arrange a firing squad for you?"

"No, this isn't about Ross." She gave Tony a half smile – she knew that all hell had been breaking loose since the Secretary of State's announcement, with a large part of the burden falling on Pepper and Tony. She hadn't wanted that, but she was currently strictly off-limits to the public and there wasn't anything she could do about it. "I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but it honestly wasn't on my mind, and it's not like you didn't already think I was dangerous-"

"Whatever it is," Rhodey interrupted, his eyes warm, "we'll deal with it. Spill."

Maggie wiped her palms on her trousers. "I told you a bit about how HYDRA used to control me, Tony. But the thing is, that's still… possible. The controlling part."

Vision tapped his chin. "You are referring to trigger words. Like the words that Helmut Zemo used to trigger Sergeant Barnes in Berlin."

Her face twisted at the reminder. " _Exactly_ like those."

A silence fell. Maggie stared at her knees. She couldn't bear to see how the others would look at her, now they knew she was just as much a weapon as they'd always feared.

Rhodey spoke first. "Trigger words? I don't… Triggering what?"

Maggie's jaw clenched. "Triggering  _me._ There are ten words in another language – I won't say what they are, so don't ask – that when I hear them, they revert me back i-into the Wyvern. There wouldn't be any Maggie left, just… just a weapon." She took a deep breath, still staring at her knees. "I don't know if there's anyone left alive who knows my words, anymore. I don't know if they're written down somewhere. I haven't heard them in two years, and I hope I never have to hear them again. But you need to know about them, because as long as those trigger words are active, I could be turned against you in a second."

Rhodey sucked in a breath and glanced sideways at Tony. Tony was listened to her silently, his expression pinched as she talked about her history, but attentive.

Vision leaned forward. "Is there a way to deactivate them?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "I looked for a way for two years, and came up with nothing. I don't really know how they were… established… in the first place. That's where my memory gets patchy, they were wiping me a lot at the time." She took a breath. "So… that's why I called a strategy meeting. I want to help you come up with a way to stop me, if it comes to that."

Rhodey frowned. "Stop you?"

"Stop me from hurting anyone," she replied. "I was thinking… you could program the Manacle, Tony, to go off on a given phrase. That way if I'm all… robot killer, any one of you could say the word and drop me. And if that fails, I know there are emergency protocols for the Facility. We could adapt those to isolate and contain me."

Vision's android eyes were focused on her, considering. "You have put a lot of thought into this."

She shrugged. "Wouldn't you?"

Tony, meanwhile, still hadn't said anything. He just watched her, his expression guarded, with one hand on his jaw and the other tapping a rhythm against his chest. Eventually, Maggie got sick of it.

"What, Tony?" He blinked at her question. "What is it? Are you angry at me for not telling you sooner?" She swallowed. "Am I too dangerous, now? Do you want to send me back to the Raft?"

He rolled his eyes – actually  _rolled his eyes_ at her. Maggie bristled, opening her mouth to start arguing properly, but he held up a hand to pre-empt her and sat up straight. "No, you idiot. I was just going to say… I already knew."

She lowered her hackles. "What?"

He grimaced. "I already knew about the trigger words. Kind of. We, uh…" he looked sideways at Rhodey, whose face suddenly lit up with understanding. "We found some stuff."

Her eyes narrowed. Could Bucky have mentioned the trigger words in his notebooks? Would Tony and Rhodey really have read them? " _Some stuff_?"

Vision cleared his throat. "I believe Mr Stark is referring to a cache of data he discovered at a HYDRA base in Québec, in March of 2014."

Comprehension hit Maggie like a freight train. She doubled over, propping her elbows on the table and resting her face in her hands. "Oh god," she mumbled through her fingers. "I read about that when it happened. You blew the base up." She looked up, and saw them all giving her that slightly exasperated look she often got when she revealed just how much she knew about the Avengers' activities over the last two years. "You found… data?"

Tony grimaced again and leaned forward. "There wasn't much, they'd tried to wipe it all a while ago, but J.A.R.V.I.S. accessed what was left. There was some remaining information about missions conducted out of the base, and an electronic file on the Wyvern Project."

Maggie flinched, and Tony's eyes softened. "It was disorganized, some of it corrupted, but there were scans and logs of your enhancements, a few notes on what they did to your mind, and details about training. There were… videos." His face darkened. "Experiments. Training."

Maggie's stomach was churning. She glanced at Rhodey, who looked as sick as she felt, and then back at Tony. "You've had this… all this time?"

Tony shook his head. "I had J.A.R.V.I.S. put them in a digital lock-box that would only open for your biometric signature. After the whole Ultron thing, the only way you'd be able to access that vault of data would be…" he swiveled on his chair to look at Vision.

Vision inclined his head. "When you are ready, Maggie, you may simply ask."

Maggie let out a long, slow breath.  _Oh._ This was a lot. "I don't… think I'm ready now. If that's okay."

Tony waved a hand. "It's fine, I wouldn't be rushing to crack that baby open either. But the reason I bring it up is to say that I know about the trigger words. There are already procedures in place, you're welcome to look them over later if you like."

Maggie blinked, glancing from Vision to Rhodey. They obviously hadn't had a hand in these 'procedures', but they didn't look surprised. "Oh. Well it's probably best if I don't know. Then I – then the Wyvern, won't know what to expect." She sat back in her chair, a little bewildered at the turn this meeting had taken.

Tony, Rhodey, and Vision seemed to understand her silence. They eased back in their chairs as well, watching her think. Maggie went from staring at the table with a blank look on her face, to chewing her lip as a frown pinched her brow.

"Something else?" Tony asked. "I hope you know the Avengers will be charging you for our time."

Maggie snorted, wondering if now was a good time to bring up her stashed ex-HYDRA funds, then shook the thought away. "Yeah, actually." She looked up, meeting Tony's eyes. "I'd like a psychologist, please."

That took all three of them aback, though Vision recovered a little faster. He didn't answer her request, since she'd asked Tony, but gave her a considering look and a small smile.

Tony scratched his head. "I'm sorry, you want a-"

"A psychologist," she repeated, then folded her hands on the table. "One that I can trust."

Rhodey cocked his head. "For the trigger words?"

"Maybe. I have a feeling I'd need to take a look at that electronic lockbox to get some clues into those. But that's not really why I'm asking." She tipped her head from side to side, not sure how to phrase her next words. "I'm… still flawed. I have nightmares. I get low. At the same time, I'm still very strong – I want to reduce the risk of me getting pissed off and kicking someone in the throat."

Tony snickered. "I wish that was a problem that I had."

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "That  _is_ a problem that you have," he shot back, then turned to Maggie. "That sounds like a great idea, Maggie." His eyes glimmered with pride, and she had to swallow back the emotion that clogged in her throat. She was still getting used to having someone other than Bucky be  _proud_ of her. She'd do anything she could to be worthy of that.

Tony nodded his agreement. "Sure. I'll look into psychologists and therapists used to working with high profile cases-" Maggie grimaced when she realized he meant  _criminals_ – "and see how many NDAs I can throw at them. Sound good?"

She sighed. "Sounds good." Another silence fell, with the two men and the android watching her to see if there was anything else on the agenda. She took a breath, and then clapped her hands together. "Alright, meeting adjourned. Thank you, Avengers. Shall I expect your bill in the post?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovely readers, drop a comment ♡ Let me know what you liked, what you didn't, what you're hoping for!


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next are kind of 'slice-of-life' chapters, but don't worry, I haven't forgotten the plot!

 

Early August, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Dr Mai Nguyen was good at her job. She'd blitzed through her medical degree and psychiatry residency in record time, attained a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry, and gained a PhD, all by the age of twenty seven.

She'd then quietly made a name for herself as the go-to woman for high-profile, difficult, and confidential cases. It wasn't that she set out to find the most complex clients, it had just… happened. She was a natural born therapist, with vast reserves of empathy, communication skills honed in a difficult childhood of her own, and the ability to be calm in the face of horrific trauma. She was also exceptionally good at breaking down barriers with even the most resistant of clients, gaining their trust and keeping it. And above all: she kept her mouth shut. She'd worked with clients in the upper echelons of political and social power, she'd worked with mob bosses and business magnates and celebrities – and children of all of the above. And not a word of their brush with therapy had entered public knowledge, save for when they themselves chose to reveal it.

Dr Nguyen was used to NDAs by now, but the sheer number that Stark Industries and the Avengers were having her sign and swear to right now was getting a little ridiculous. Maybe alone they would have been okay, but the endless piles of paperwork were accompanied by security briefings, media briefings, personal safety briefings… so many briefings.

Eventually, they'd decided she'd jumped through enough hoops, and they gave her an unlabeled thin manila folder. Exhausted by the rigmarole of paperwork, Dr Nguyen flipped it open, and finally realized what all the fuss was about.

_Oh._

 

It took Dr Nguyen a few days to go through the file, even though it was small. Even the minimal information included suggested dozens of things to unpack: early orphaning, witnessing the deaths of parents at an early age, kidnapping, brainwashing, torture, forced assassination… the list went on.

Dr Nguyen didn't believe in a hopeless client – she'd been able to help too many 'hopeless clients' to be so naïve. But this file made her wonder. Tragedy compounded upon tragedy, mixed up with superheros and powers and global forces that even she, with her high IQ and multiple degrees, struggled to comprehend.

On the day of the appointment, Dr Nguyen readied herself in her assigned office; she went over her notes one last time before putting them away (no one liked to feel like they were being studied when they opened up), and slipped into the zen state that had gotten her this far in her career – nothing could shock her, there was only her mind and the solution.

The office itself was nice, arranged as per her specifications – a few comfortable seats arranged around the room, a low coffee table, a window with good view of the outside world and plenty of sunlight. The Facility itself was very impressive, ultra-modern and sleek, so she was surprised they'd been able to provide her with such a comfortable space.

A few moments later, there came a knock at the door and in walked Margaret Stark. She wore pale grey scrubs, a pair of white shoes, and a metal bracelet on her arm with a green LED light on it. Dr Nguyen knew the bracelet's function, had been told the phrase to make it go off and shut down her client. She already knew she'd never use it.

Dr Nguyen tried not to come into a room with set expectations. That being said, she'd had some preconceived ideas about Ms Stark: she'd been anticipating rage, reluctance, paralyzing depression, maybe even violence.

But what she got was a woman who paused at the door, gave her a polite greeting, and came to sit on the couch opposite her. Her eyes were bright and her movements measured, as if she was very conscious of being watched, but not unsettled.

"Thank you for coming on short notice," Ms Stark said, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. Dr Nguyen noticed that she had a binder resting on her lap, and she was anxiously tapping the top of it.

"It's no trouble at all," Dr Nguyen replied, smiling at the woman. She kept her posture loose, but she was watching the other woman closely for any signs of aggression or falsehood.

"I hear you're quite qualified," Ms Stark said, returning a friendly smile. "M.D., PhD., fellowship, published in plenty of notable journals. I have to admit I'm a bit jealous."

Dr Nguyen cocked her head. "I don't think you came here to discuss my degrees." Because she'd just realized something that the file certainly hadn't mentioned:  _Ms Stark had requested this appointment._

The other woman smiled sheepishly. "I guess you're right. Maybe we could circle back to it later." With that, she lifted the binder from her lap and placed it on the low table between them. She flicked it open, and Dr Nguyen frowned down at what looked like…  _a table of contents_?

"This is a list of things I'd like to discuss," Ms Stark said, suddenly all business. "It's itemized by relevance to the current state of my mental health, relevance to the health of people around me, and things I have nightmares about. I've also included an appendix with therapies I've tried on my own, with some notes about new research I'd like to explore."

Dr Nguyen didn't think there was anything wrong with displaying emotions in front of clients – it often helped to break down barriers. But one emotion that she strictly tried to avoid was surprise, as it tended to alienate clients and make them feel like there was something especially wrong with them. And yet, faced with Ms Stark and her binder of itemized personal demons, she couldn't seem to wipe the look of shock from her face.

Seeing this, Ms Stark smiled sheepishly again and closed the binder. "But of course, you're the expert. Where would you like to start?"

 

* * *

 

Maggie and her new-found therapist found a good rhythm – they met three times a week, working through Maggie's deep seated trauma and whatever happened to come up in her daily life. Within days Maggie realized that Dr Nguyen now knew more about her than anyone, except for Bucky and Tony. At first the thought made her paranoid, but then she expressed those feelings in their next session and Dr Nguyen talked her through them.

Therapy was difficult, and painful, and sometimes made her nightmares worse, but Maggie knew it was worth it. She was kind of giddy that she was able to have a psychiatrist like she'd been reading about for two years. And a highly qualified and professional one, at that.

Maggie was focusing on her mental health again, but she was also acutely aware of the world beyond the Avengers Facility. Public furore was still raging over the news, but there hadn't been any tangible progress – Ross held periodic press conferences to explain that the Accords committee and the State Department were very busy dealing with recent events, and that they'd alert the public when more progress was made. Basically, as Tony frustratedly huffed out one night, they weren't doing anything. Stark Industries was functioning as per usual, and the Avengers were working out how to protect people with only a three-man team. The media was left to continue to postulate wildly, with no more information.

A few weeks after Ross's press conference, a bigger story than Maggie hit the world when King T'Challa took his place in front of the United Nations and gave a speech about unity.

Maggie and Tony were arguing over the circuitry in Mark II of Rhodey's exosuit when F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke up: "Boss, Ms Stark – I think you'll want to see this."

Half an hour later, Tony was looking through the initial cache of data that Wakanda had released to the world – demographic details about Wakanda, goals for diplomatic outreach, and data about technology the like of which the rest of the earth had never seen.

"Son of a  _bitch_ ," he eventually breathed. He hadn't said a word in over twenty minutes, and Maggie had been a little worried that he'd forgotten how to speak. "I should've known that suit was far too advanced to come out of a supposedly third world country. What the  _hell_."

Maggie didn't know T'Challa all that well, but she was just as astounded at the revelation about Wakanda's apparent technological wealth.  _And they'd kept it a secret this whole time._

Shaking her head, she pulled up T'Challa's U.N. address again and watched it with new eyes.

Tony looked over about halfway through, and came to stand beside Maggie.

" _We will work to be an example of how we as brothers and sisters on this earth should treat each other_ ," the grave-faced monarch said. " _Now, more than ever, the illusions of the vision threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of great crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe._ "

Maggie and Tony were silent for a few moments, standing in the workshop with a wealth of projected holographic knowledge surrounding them. Maggie supposed she ought to feel embarrassed that Wakandan technology far outstripped any tech that she'd conceived of. But she didn't feel embarrassed. She felt  _excited._

She let out a breath. "This changes everything."

Tony's mouth shut with a snap _._ "You're damn right," he said, sounding just as overwhelmed as she did. "Let's get started."

 

* * *

 

August passed at a steady pace. Maggie wasn't an actively kept secret anymore, so she was able to pass around the Facility with a little more ease – she still needed to wear the Manacle and have an escort, but now Facility staff were permitted to see her. Some of them stared at her, but most ignored her and kept on with their work. This wasn't exactly an oddity-free workplace. Dr Erik Selvig in the astrophysics lab shook her hand once without appearing to recognize her, and then put her and Vision to work running data analysis for a recent cosmic event. That had been a good day.

Maggie spent most of her time in the workshop, though she started to eat more and more meals in the Avengers common room with Tony, Pepper, and sometimes Rhodey. Vision joined them for dinner, discussing all sorts of things from philosophy to memes to biochemical engineering as they ate. Pepper was amused each time Maggie got caught up in the conversation and forgot to eat her dinner before it went cold.

Between the workshop, getting to know her brother and his team, and therapy, Maggie fell into a schedule. And she began to realize that she was living a life, odd as it was. She'd started to collect possessions – first the small gifts from Tony and the things she'd liberated from the acquisitions room, but then small things like books, and clothes. After a few weeks Pepper had decided that Maggie really didn't need to be walking around in scrubs all day, and had bought her a few outfits to help her blend in at the Facility a little better.

Maggie had been experimenting with her own clothes for two years, and she quickly gravitated towards her favorites: jeans, colorful shirts, boots, flowy skirts and sundresses, all in warm tones. Her choices seemed to surprise Tony and the others, who'd only ever seen her in tactical gear or prison scrubs, but they quickly adjusted and she ended up having a very interesting session with Dr Nguyen about how valuable it was for her to exert her choice over something as small as her wardrobe.

The stability of her life now was strange – she'd never been able to settle anywhere before. Even with Bucky, she'd only kept what she could carry with her. Now, she could leave things in her room – her cell – and not have to accept the fact that she might never see them again.

Her life was stable, and safe, and she got to see her brother and his friends more or less every day. And yet there was a hole in her heart where Bucky belonged, and she knew it wasn't going away. She didn't  _want_ it to go away.

_The mission isn't over._

 

* * *

 

A week or so after Wakanda's entry into the world, Maggie found herself in the gym with Tony and Rhodey. Rhodey was working through exercises prescribed by his physiotherapist, and had decided to multitask by inviting Maggie and Tony along to discuss his new exosuit. It was completed, but he already had some modifications in mind.

Of course, Maggie wasn't being particularly helpful because the minute they'd stepped into the gym she'd been too busy staring around at the equipment.

This was the gym the Avengers trained in, back when there had been more than three Avengers. The space was  _massive_ , basically a warehouse. It had all the regular gym equipment such as treadmills and weights (some that were reinforced for enhanced humans and/or alien gods). But that wasn't all – there were trampolines, gymnastic equipment, sparring mats, swings, ramps, pipes, nets, ladders, and towers made of foam and wooden blocks. It was part obstacle course, part playground, and Maggie couldn't drag her eyes away. She and Tony had only spent about a minute in here on her initial tour of the Facility, but they'd been absorbed in conversation at the time. She did recall that he'd said something about it being an American Ninja Warrior gym on steroids, whatever  _that_ meant.

"Are you okay, Maggie?"

She blinked and glanced away from the agility climbing course. "Hm?"

Rhodey rolled his eyes at her as he did slow, repetitive movements in his exosuit. "You haven't heard a word we've said, have you?"

Tony crossed his arms, eyebrows raised.

"Sure I have," she said, glancing from Rhodey's exasperated expression to Tony's suspicious one. "You've been telling us what modifications you want for the next exosuit."

Rhodey cocked an eyebrow. "And what modifications do I want?"

"Faster response to your bioelectric impulses," she guessed. "Shock absorption. In-built heaters." She could see she wasn't convincing either of them, so she shrugged and added: "jet propulsion. Leopard print paint job."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Not that that wouldn't be awesome, Rhodey's a stick in the mud and he's hardly going to-"

"Hey now," Rhodey argued, "I'm not the one zoning out and drooling over gym equipment. Do you want to have a look around, Maggie?"

Her eyes lit up. "Can I?"

Tony and Rhodey shared a glance at that. Sometimes they forgot that Maggie had spent most of her life enslaved, physically and mentally. She'd mostly adjusted to become her own person, but occasionally they were reminded of her past when she didn't recognize things most adults did, such as pop culture references and historical events. And sometimes, like now, she lit up with such childlike glee at being allowed to have  _fun._

"Yeah, go on," Tony said, waving a hand at her. "See if you can come up with something better than  _jet propulsion_ while you're at it."

Like a shot Maggie was off, kicking off her shoes before leaping onto a trampoline and springing off it and onto a net ladder. Tony and Rhodey shook their heads at her and went back to discussing the exosuit.

They found themselves distracted a few minutes later when Maggie went flying over their heads with a whoop, doing a somersault before she caught herself on a hanging rope and swung up onto a raised platform. Rhodey's mouth dropped open.

"I guess she figured out the agility course," Tony observed, watching her hurdle over a foam block and then slide through a narrow opening in the climbing structure. He shook his head. "She's just as bad as Clint." The reminder of Clint and his betrayal stung a bit, but it was nice to remember some of his fonder memories of the Avengers.

Rhodey rubbed his jaw. "Y'know, Tony, you pretty much decide where she goes and when. You should think about giving her access to the gym more regularly. She's gotta be climbing the walls stuck in her room all the time."

When Maggie popped out of the top of the climbing structure she saw them looking at her and she waved, her hair strewn across her face and her cheeks pink. She was grinning from ear to ear.

Tony tapped his chest. "That's not a bad idea."

 

Maggie's schedule shifted to include two hours a day at the gym – she never got bored with the climbing and agility equipment, but sometimes she took out her aggression on a punching bag, or ate away the miles on one of the reinforced treadmills. It was nice to stretch her legs, to work so hard that she felt her muscles burning and her lungs aching for air. Tony had to explain most of the equipment to her, as HYDRA hadn't exactly given her a gym pass back in the day, but once she got the hang of it all she enjoyed it.

Occasionally the exercise brought back memories of being tested by HYDRA, at the beginning – she got flashes of stumbling along a treadmill with wires hanging from her temples and chest, or lifting weights to impress visiting HYDRA lieutenants. But they were only flashes. There was no one testing her here, expecting her to use her strength to hurt people.

Agents at the Facility had access to the gym, but after a few sideways looks they got used to seeing Maggie, in gym clothes with earbuds in, working at one piece of equipment or another. Her speed, strength and reflexes were just as sharp as ever, but the gym was specifically designed for that and she found herself more than challenged. She wondered if Steve had ever felt the same tired relief after using the gym that she did.

 

* * *

 

She still spent most of her time in the workshop, with Tony or Vision, working on Rhodey's exo-suit and armor. Dum-E and U quickly got used to her presence, but that didn't stop Dum-E being overly affectionate or expecting her to play with him. It seemed that in his mind, she was still a toddler.

Maggie was also intrigued by B.A.R.F. and was working on ways to expand the technology, make it more applicable to publicly available therapies – she'd even asked Dr Nguyen for some ideas, and they'd experimented with using the technology in her sessions. She privately wondered if it might offer a key to removing her trigger words. That had become her secret project, for now too remote a hope to share with Tony or Dr Nguyen. She worked on it alone, in the privacy of her own mind.

She and Tony had also gone through all the data Wakanda had released in less than a day. Wakanda's shock announcement had taken some of the heat off Maggie, though there were still almost daily questions about what was going to happen to her.

Tony reached out to T'Challa, hoping to get a look at Wakandan tech in person, but the king politely replied that Wakanda had carefully planned its engagement with the outside world and such information was going to be released slowly. They were still understandably wary about revealing the extent of their Vibranium caches, and were currently busy building embassies, negotiating the welcome of outsiders, and collaborating with governments and corporations around the world. Stark Industries and Tony Stark would just have to wait, like the rest of the world.

T'Challa had included a more personal note, asking Tony to pass on his reiterated apologies and well-wishes to Maggie.

"Maybe  _you_ could get him to spill the goods," Tony suggested one day. "Tell him it's the only way you'll forgive him for the wing thing, or something." Maggie raised an eyebrow, and he grimaced. "Yeah. Too soon, right?"

" _Way_ too soon. Not that I don't forgive him, I know he didn't mean to, but…" she shrugged. "It meant something, Tony. I'm not ready to joke about it."

He was really grimacing now, his fingers tapping at his sternum. "I know, I'm sorry. Bad joke."

"It's okay. Besides, it doesn't seem like T'Challa's the one behind all this tech anyway. It's this person called…" she flicked through a holographic screen of data. "Shuri?"

Tony snapped his fingers. "I meant to tell you, I looked her up! Wakanda still hasn't given out much in the way of demographics but one of the few things the world  _did_ know about Wakanda before the U.N. speech was the names of the Wakandan royals. The Chief Scientist is actually…" he flicked a hand, bringing up an image of a girl who couldn't be older than twenty. " _Princess_  Shuri."

Maggie stared at the image of the girl, taking in her bright eyes, mischievous smile, and brightly-colored Wakandan garb. Her hair was bound up in an intricate up-do, braided with orange thread. The photo must have been taken at some kind of diplomatic event, because she was standing beside her late father, her mother, and her brother.

Maggie glanced from the holographic image to the vault of data analysis that she and Tony had been working on, trying to understand Wakanda's initial released information. Whoever was behind that tech was as smart or smarter than Maggie and her brother, with an alternative creative flair that one didn't usually see in engineers.

"I want to meet her," Maggie blurted out. "I want her to be my best friend."

Tony snorted. "Maybe they'll let us visit one day."

They fell silent, simultaneously remembering the state of the world outside the workshop: if Maggie was going anywhere, it wasn't to Wakanda. It was to prison.

But they'd quickly learned how to adapt to the tense state of her existence – it didn't bear stressing about every minute of every day, so they shook off the strained silence and got back to work.

 

* * *

 

Vision sometimes came to the workshop to help out or work on his own projects, but that wasn't the only place Maggie saw him. He was one of her regular escorts, and she enthusiastically followed him around, asking lots of invasive questions. They got along well, after that first emotional conversation at the breakfast table, and they compared notes on their journeys to become people. Vision was endlessly fascinating to Maggie, and he seemed amused by her quick mind and easy jokes. One day, as Vision was teaching Maggie how to play chess, he smiled at one of her jokes and said: "I think you would get along well with Wanda."

Maggie cocked her head. "She seemed nice, the short time that I knew her. I get the sense she picks up a lot more about the people around her than she lets on."

"Her abilities do not give her the choice," Vision replied, reaching across to move his bishop. "But I have always found it remarkable how she does not seek to use her abilities to harm people. Ever since she became an Avenger, she has been determined to do good." A shadow crossed his face. "The mistake she made in Lagos cost her a great deal."

Maggie moved her knight and then pressed her lips together, watching him. Vision spoke to her about Wanda all the time – she got the sense that he felt uncomfortable discussing her with the other Avengers, and he had very few people to confide in. It was clear how deeply he felt about the Sokovian, and the way her absence haunted him made Maggie's chest ache.

"Have you thought at all about what I asked you, the morning I met you?" He glanced up at her, confused, and she continued. "Is there a place in this world for you and Wanda?"

For all that he was a powerful, omnipresent being, Vision was a terrible liar. At the mention of seeing Wanda again his face closed off and his eyes darted away. His mouth opened, but Maggie already knew that whatever he was about to say would be a lie, so she held up her hand.

"You don't have to tell me," she said. Vision's eyes darted back up to hers guiltily, and she smiled. "Whatever you decide, though… if you're happy, then I'm happy for you."

Vision's tense posture loosened a little, and Maggie smiled. She supposed she ought to feel guilty for encouraging an Avenger to meet up with a traitor to the Accords, but she truthfully wasn't thinking about the Accords at all. She was thinking about the loneliness that flickered in Vision's eyes, and the way his face lit up when he was talking about Wanda Maximoff. She might be living a bit vicariously through him, sure, but she could take that up with Dr Nguyen.

He got over his guilty reaction, and moved his queen. "Checkmate."

Maggie let out a string of curses. "I'm going to set this game on fire."

Vision merely smiled at her, then cocked his head and asked "Are we friends, Maggie?"

"Are we friends?" she echoed, staring at him. She and Vision had clicked so naturally that she hadn't thought to clarify the point. It seemed obvious – she looked forward to spending time with him, and she realized that she trusted him. Vision leaned back a little, his expression falling as her silence stretched, and she held up a hand. "Yes, yes! I'm sorry, I've never… well, I haven't got a lot of experience with friendships."

"I wonder what that's like," Vision replied, recovering from his unease and smiling blandly at her.

She rolled her eyes. "We'll figure it out together. But if we're friends, then I'm allowed to do this." She picked up her defeated king and tossed it at Vision's chest. He let it phase through him and hit the back of the couch, then shot an unimpressed look at her.

"I'm not going to play you in chess until I think I can beat you," she announced. "Do you want to play Scrabble?"

 

* * *

 

Vision wasn't her only friend. There was Tony, of course, but her relationship with him was complicated, not always  _friendly_ but always marked by a deep sense of family.

But it appeared she'd found friends in both Rhodey and Pepper. Pepper was busy more often than not, but she made a point of visiting Maggie at least once a week, to sip wine and talk about anything from art to international corporate agreements, or to go for walks down by the lake. Sometimes Tony hung out with them, but he usually ended up complaining that they were ganging up on him and left in a dramatic sulk. Pepper was kind, and Maggie had had little kindness in her life.

Rhodey was busy with his physiotherapy and slowly getting back to work, but he always had time for Maggie. He joined her in the gym sometimes and they went on the treadmills together, him trudging at the sedate pace recommended by his physiotherapist, and her pushing the reinforced treadmill to its max speeds. At first she matched his pace, showing solidarity, but he threw his water bottle at her and told her to  _pick up the pace, kid._

A few nights a week Rhodey picked up Maggie from her room and they would sit in the Avengers common room, swaddled in blankets as they watched Netflix and stuffed their mouths with junk food. They watched documentaries about aircraft, and animated kids movies, and enjoyed both equally. Sometimes Rhodey told Maggie about the missions he'd flown, and she listened with the same wide-eyed attention that she'd have given him twenty five years ago.

 

* * *

 

The section of the Accords that specifically referred to the Avengers stated that as the Avengers were now publicly accountable, they had to hold fortnightly media briefings and answer questions. Those briefings were overseen by Pepper and a team of PR specialists, but they were still painful for the remaining Avengers. In the first few briefings all the questions were about the missing Avengers, and how the remaining three felt about the betrayal. Understandably, they came back from the media briefings pissed-off and upset, even the normally unflappable Vision.

Ever since Maggie's identity had been released, most of the questions at the briefings were about her.

"Mr Stark, how do you feel about your sister being a murderer?"

"Is the Wyvern undergoing psychiatric evaluation?"

"Should we be concerned that the Winter Soldier will come looking for the Wyvern?"

"How do the Avengers expect to convince the world they're protecting us when they're also protecting a serial killer?"

Maggie watched the briefings in her cell, white-knuckled and pale, her eyes fixed on Tony's stony face. He, Rhodey, and Vision were seated at a long wooden table, trying – and mostly succeeding – to appear calm. Thankfully, the Avengers only had to have one response to those kinds of questions:

"Ms Stark's ongoing assessment is being conducted by the United States Government and the Accords Committee. It's not under the Avengers' purview. Next question please."

Eventually the reporters started to get the hint and went back to asking about the current state of the Avengers, and how they hoped to protect the planet.

Tony, Vision, and Rhodey were in one of these media briefings when blaring alarms sounded across the Facility. In her cell Maggie leaped to her feet, instantly ready to defend herself, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. immediately said: "You're not in danger, Ms Stark. That's the call to assemble."

Maggie's stomach plummeted. "For the Avengers?"

"Yes. I'm not at liberty to reveal the nature of the emergency, but the Avengers will be leaving in less than five minutes."

Maggie glanced back at her StarkPad, heart racing, and saw that Tony, Rhodey, and Vision had left the podium, leaving the excited reporters shouting in their wake.

"Oh god," she said. Her breathing was coming fast, and she had to sit down. "Rhodey's not cleared for combat yet, the suit isn't ready." She dug her fingers into her knees.

"Are you alright, Ms Stark?"

"It's just Vision and Tony." Her head spun. "I don't care what the emergency is, how can they go with just the two of them?"

There was a brief pause, and Maggie wondered if F.R.I.D.A.Y. was planning on leaving her alone with her panicked thoughts. But then the A.I. spoke again: "The boss's suit is fully functional, and Vision is more than capable as I'm sure you're aware. I've just spoken with the Boss, you're cleared to make your way to the aircraft hangar." The cell door slid open.

Maggie blinked. " _What_?"

"You have three minutes, I recommend you make the most of them."

"But the Manacle-"

"I have complete control over the Facility, Ms Stark, I assure you that you're not going anywhere."

"Right." She swallowed past her instinctive fear at being left alone, then shot up from her seat and walked out into the corridor. It seemed F.R.I.D.A.Y. was back to clearing people out of the way before she got there, so she sprinted through the now-familiar corridors toward the aircraft hangar. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears and her fingers were shaking.

When she burst into the hangar, a massive structure of steel and glass, she skidded to a halt and glanced around wildly.

"Maggie!"

Vision, Tony, and Rhodey were standing at the far end of the nearly-empty hangar, by a Quinjet. As Maggie watched, an Avengers strike team jogged up the loading ramp, prepping their weapons. The jet powered up.

Maggie ran across the hangar to them – Tony was in his suit with his face plate down, Vision was in his synthetic battle outfit, and Rhodey was standing beside them in his military uniform and exosuit, arms crossed. When she reached them, Tony reached out and dropped his metal gauntlet on her shoulder. There was a glint of concern in his eyes, but his bearing was relaxed.

"Short notice, but we've got to head off. Rhodey's going to stay here and keep an eye out for you."

Maggie couldn't conceal the panic in her eyes as she glanced between Vision and Tony. "Is it dangerous? Whatever it is that you're going to fight?"

Vision was hovering a foot off the ground, his cape blowing in an invisible wind. "We cannot discuss the details with you, but I assure you we will be fine."

Tony squeezed her shoulder. "It'll be okay, Maggot, I'll see you soon." The Quinjet's loading ramp closed, and he glanced over his shoulder. "We've got to go, though. Be good."

Maggie's heart leaped into her mouth, and she sprang forward to hug Tony. She could only just wrap her arms around the armor, but strangely that reassured her – he was larger than life, like this, and she could almost believe that he was invincible.

"Good luck," she murmured, then pulled away. Tony's eyes were on her, unreadable. "Maybe think about using that stealth mode, for once in your life."

He grinned. "Don't count on it." His faceplate snapped closed, and behind him the Quinjet hovered off the ground.

Maggie wanted to hug Vision, too, but it seemed like it'd be difficult given that he was hovering in mid-air. She settled for waving at him. "Be safe, Vis."

"I will." He inclined his head and smiled at her, apparently unfazed by the imminent danger.

Rhodey, who'd so far been silent and unhappy, with his arms folded over his chest, sighed. "Watch your six, Tony."

"Yes, dear." With that, Tony gave them both a jaunty wave and then fired up his repulsors, jetting out of the hanger in a blast of light and sound. With one last nod Vision soared after him, silent and weightless.

Maggie and Rhodey stood side-by-side as Tony, Vision, and the Quinjet flew west. When they were too far away to distinguish, Rhodey let out a long sigh.

"I should be with them."

She swallowed and turned to him. She felt jittery from the rush of adrenaline, and her worry for Tony. Rhodey looked unhappy, but she knew he knew exactly why he wasn't ready to start Avenging yet. She shuffled closer to him, and poked at his folded arms until his hold loosened, and she managed to hook her arm through his. He smiled at her, then went back to looking out at the empty sky.

"I'm not done yet, Maggie," he said, his brow heavy.

Maggie looked from his face to the wide open sky. She thought about the boy she'd saved in Argentina, about the bank robbers she and Bucky had stopped. She thought about all the injustices she  _knew_ were still out there.

She didn't respond to Rhodey out loud, but there was only one thought in her head:

_I don't think I'm done yet, either._


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all, hope you had a happy Halloween!

Early September, 2016  
Avengers Facility

About a week had passed since the emergency mission – it had all gone off without a hitch, and Tony and Vision had been back by breakfast the next day without a scratch. It seemed a disgruntled scientist with visions of becoming the next Iron Man had built some kind of mechanized armor and attacked his workplace. Luckily the incident was domestic, so the Accords Committee had given the Avengers approval to mobilize in no time at all.

Maggie was glad that the system had worked, but the reminder that her brother was on the front line against whatever and whoever decided to threaten the planet had shaken her. She'd done some digging with F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help, and come across some… whispers.

Whispers was the best way to describe what she found, because it wasn't  _facts_ , or  _data._ Just rumors, really. Rumors of a group of vigilante warriors who hit hard and fast in the shadows of criminal activity, and then vanished. They were seemingly impervious to international borders and regulation, and they didn't make a lot of noise. Intelligence agencies were too caught up with the Accords and the fallout from Zemo's plots to really look to deeply into what was happening.

She suspected the Avengers knew something about it, though – one night as she watched the news with Rhodey, there was a story about a human trafficking ring that had been dismantled in one night in 'mysterious circumstances'. Rhodey shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and changed the channel.

Maggie didn't say anything out loud, not even to herself. But she was pretty sure she knew who was behind the whispers – it seemed the fugitive Avengers weren't done saving the world.

She couldn't do anything about it though, apart from worry about her one-time teammates and about her brother. She'd focused on making the most of her meetings with Dr Nguyen. Today, Maggie was finally opening up about her trigger words.

"The thing is," she murmured, tugging at the bright purple putty Dr Nguyen provided to keep her hands busy, "I might have a real chance at deactivating them. The only problem is that that chance is an electronic vault of data and  _videos_ of what they did to me."

Dr Nguyen had been silent as Maggie explained her trigger words, save for a clarifying question here or there, but she seemed to see that Maggie needed a little prompting. "And you don't feel you're ready for that?"

Maggie huffed a laugh. "It's like my own personal Pandora's box. If I go looking I might find a way to get rid of my trigger words once and for all, but in the process…" she swallowed.

"What are you afraid of finding?"

Her fingers tore into the putty. "I'm afraid of finding exactly what's already in my memories. I remember most of what they did to me and that… just that is enough to give me enough nightmares for a lifetime. I don't know if I could handle reliving those things through  _their_ perspective. Because that's what it would be – their notes, their reports, their freaking asset analysis. Chief Scientist Sanders was the one in charge of all the experiments and she… she didn't see me as a person. None of them did. Most of my memories of her involve her testing my physical limits until I screamed, and then she'd jot down her observations on a clipboard." She shivered. "I only just started being a person, I don't know if I'm ready to go trawling through a bunch of data that refers to me as a weapon. But…" her face twisted. "That makes me feel like a coward. That I won't even look at the data, when there's a chance it could fix me."

Dr Nguyen leaned forward at that. " _You_ set your limits, Maggie," she urged, her voice low. "From the sounds of it you don't know that anyone knows your trigger words, and it would be near impossible for anyone to get to you, as it is. Furthermore, we're both very aware of all the security measures in place in case the worst should happen." Maggie's fingers still twisted and pulled at the putty, but she was listening intently to Dr Nguyn.

The doctor met her eyes. "You are perfectly within your rights to decide you're not ready to read material that would no doubt be highly traumatic for you. As your psychiatrist, I  _strongly_ agree that would be a bad idea. So stay the course, Maggie. Take things at your own time. And I want you to understand that you're not a coward. Far from it."

She blinked at Dr Nguyen – normally the doctor wasn't quite so passionate. She usually calmly provided options and talked through them with Maggie.

"Okay," she said, surprised. But then another twist of guilt hit, and she glanced away. "I guess I also feel like I'm letting Bucky down." She sensed the other woman straighten. "He's who knows where, missing an arm and probably just as scared of his trigger words as I am of mine. If I look at that data, then maybe I can help him as well."

Dr Nguyen leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. "I don't know Bucky," she said softly, "but I think you know him very well. Would he want you to do something you feel so uncomfortable about?"

Maggie could almost hear him:  _Don't do anything stupid on my account, doll._ She smiled sadly. "No."

"He sounds like a smart man," Dr Nguyen said wryly.

Maggie squeezed her eyes shut. "I miss him. It doesn't feel real, that I might not see him again. We spent time apart before – not as long as this, but it still feels like this is temporary. Like we'll meet up in a safehouse in a few days time and it won't hurt any more." She'd spoken about Bucky before, lots of times. Dr Nguyen and Vision were really the only ones she could confide in about this. Tony knew about her relationship with Bucky, of course, but they didn't talk about it. They weren't ready for that. "I don't know where he is, who he's with, how he's doing. It's scary."

Dr Nguyen's voice was kind, when she next spoke. "What you're feeling is perfectly natural. And even though I'm technically being employed by the Avengers, and I'm aware of the political situation…" she hesitated, and Maggie opened her eyes to see the doctor looking conflicted. Eventually, Dr Nguyen spread her hands and shrugged. "I just want to remind you that it's a big world, Maggie. And you've got time."

 

* * *

 

Maggie left the session feeling raw and vulnerable, like an exposed nerve. Tony picked her up from outside the office, but he sensed her mood and didn't push.

"Back to your room?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

Maggie's jaw clenched. She knew she ought to rest after the harrowing session, but she felt like she might go crazy if she was left alone in her cell. So she shook her head. "Workshop," she muttered. Maybe she could work off the jitters, drown her mind in work.

Tony looked skeptical, but he shrugged and led the way to the workshop. They walked in silence, but Maggie could tell that Tony's attention was focused on her, aware of her every movement and breath. Normally the protectiveness would make her smile, but now it just set her on edge. Her mind was conjuring demons that might be lurking in the electronic vault waiting for her.

When they arrived, Maggie didn't smile at the  _Antirhodos_ sign over the workshop doors as she normally did. She was too focused on getting in amongst the unfeeling machines and forgetting herself. Tony let her go, moving to his workbench. He didn't start work just yet, though, because Maggie wasn't heading for the B.A.R.F. setup or anything else she was working on at the moment. No, she'd grabbed a toolbox and a welding setup and carried it to the bench up the back corner of the workshop, where her wings lay. Tony's eyebrows hiked up his forehead. She didn't look back at him though – she pulled off the canvas covering, rolled a chair up to the bench, and got to work on repairing her wings.

Tony watched her work in silence. She'd looked at her wings from time to time, but she hadn't even spoken about potentially fixing them. He could see she wasn't going near the completely torn wing just yet, focusing on superficial rips and dents, but even that was a pretty big step. Her shoulders were set, determined, and her lips were pressed in a thin line. Tony scratched his chin.  _Therapy, huh._

He supposed Ross would have a thing or two to say about Maggie fixing her wings, but he frankly couldn't give a damn. It wasn't like he was letting her fly off into the sunset, this was just… constructive tinkering. He shrugged to himself, and turned to his own work.

 

It was only half an hour later, however, that Tony frowned and looked up. At first he wasn't sure what caught his attention, until he realized that he hadn't heard a sound from the other side of the workshop in a while. Sure enough, Maggie was motionless over her wings. Her back was to him, but he could see that she was holding a welding torch a few inches over her wings, unmoving. Her head was bowed, and her chest rose and fell in short, sharp bursts.

"Maggie?"

She didn't respond.

"Maggot?" Tony got to his feet, suddenly tense, and padded across the workshop. Dum-E had sensed something was up and dogged his footsteps, whirring lowly. At the other side of the workshop Tony tried to squeeze around the side of the bench, but it was pretty well tucked into the corner.

"Earth to Maggie?" He could see the side of her face now – she was staring wide-eyed down at her wings, but she didn't seem to really be seeing them. Her face was pale, and her jaw was clenched.

"Hey," Tony said in a lower voice, and reached out to rest a gentle hand on her back. "Do you want me to call-"

The second his hand made contact with Maggie's back she exploded from her seat with a scream. Before Tony knew what was happening she'd slammed his hand against the metal bench with a metallic clang, and dove away – she didn't account for Dum-E, however, and the two of them went sprawling in with a resounding  _crash._

Tony whirled around with his hands raised, but Maggie wasn't attacking any more. She scrambled to her feet and clutched her head, and Tony's eyes widened when he saw the look on her face. It was clear that she didn't know where she was, maybe not even who she was: her eyes were wild, darting around, her face twisted in pain and fear. She caught sight of him and stumbled backwards, tripping over machinery and table legs.

"Whoah, Maggie," Tony breathed, hands held up and his heart pounding, "it's okay, it's me-" he took a step forward and she sucked in a sharp breath.

" _Don't touch me_!" she sobbed, holding up one shaking hand as if to ward him off. Tony froze, only able to watch as his disoriented, weeping sister stumbled through his workshop.

His mind was reeling, thinking through everything he knew about disassociation and trauma. Before he could come up with a plan to bring Maggie back to herself, the walls and windows of the workshop frosted over, the clear glass becoming opaque, and F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s digital, Irish-accented voice filled the workshop.

"Your name is Margaret Stark," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, her voice pitched low. "You are safe, you are in Tony Stark's workshop at the Avengers Facility, in Upstate New York. I am F.R.I.D.A.Y., Tony Stark's A.I. It is September 4th, 2016. You are safe, the boss is safe. It's alright, Ms Stark."

When F.R.I.D.A.Y. first spoke Maggie had flinched, her eyes somehow going wider, but as the A.I. laid out the facts in her calm, measured voice, recognition filtered into Maggie's face and she stopped trying to get away. When the A.I. finished, Maggie let out a rush of breath and sank to the floor.

Tony was still frozen by the bench in the corner, his hands outstretched and his eyes wide. Dum-E was on the ground, his claw angled backwards so he could see Maggie. The workshop was suddenly very, very quiet.

"Okay," Tony said, and Maggie's eyes flicked up to him. She looked exhausted, her face haggard and sweaty, her clothes and hair in disarray. "That was intense. Are you okay?" he asked.

Maggie's face crumpled, and she hid it in her hands. "I'm so sorry," she managed to say through her fingers. The words were muffled by tears. "Oh god, I'm so sorry Tony."

"It's okay," he breathed, still a little shocked. "Can I come over there?"

She nodded, face still hidden in her hands. Tony immediately went to her, taking slow steps even though he wanted to rush. Dum-E bleeped indignantly at being left on the floor.

Tony cautiously knelt on the ground a few feet away from Maggie. She was half-slumped against his workbench, her legs boneless on the ground and her face buried in her hands. He noticed that her chest was heaving with silent sobs, and his heart sank.

"Maggie, I'm sorry," he croaked. He reached out, thought better of it, and snatched his hand back. He winced – that was the hand Maggie had hit, and it ached every time he moved it.

She shook her head and dragged her hands away. Her eyes were swimming with tears and her face was splotchy. "It's not your fault," she said, voice trembling. "It's mine, I should have-"

He shook his head emphatically. "It's not your fault, don't be stupid. Do you want to talk about it?" He'd never seen her look so distraught – when she'd been baring her soul to him and Pepper she'd been angry, lashing out. After Siberia she'd just been… blank. But this was something new, the way she'd seemed so lost and terrified as she lurched through his workshop.

Maggie swallowed, taking deep breaths in through her nose, out through her mouth. He recognized that breathing pattern, it was the same he forced himself into to stop himself from having a panic attack.

"I should," she murmured, squeezing her eyes shut. "If you don't mind."

"Do I-" he stared at her. "Of course I don't mind!"

Maggie's eyes opened and she watched him blearily. Then her eyes tracked down to where he was clutching his right wrist tenderly. The color drained from her face.

"I hurt you," she whispered, her voice hoarse. Her eyes widened, and she suddenly looked as if she was going to be sick.

Tony flung his hands out again, concealing his wince. "It's okay!" he said, catching her gaze and holding it. "Seriously, it's fine, see?" He shook his right hand at her, grimaced when he realized it hurt a bit more than he'd thought, and then shuffled a bit closer. Her eyes dropped away, filled with shame, but he snapped his fingers and she looked back up. "Honestly, I hurt myself worse all the time, this is nothing compared to the first time I trialed the walk-through disassembly station for the armor. So just… chill out. Let's just calm down, and talk about this."

Maggie didn't seem all that convinced, but she took another deep breath, eyes fixed on his. He nodded at her.

"Okay, great. Now am I going to help you if I touch you right now, or make things worse?"

She wrapped her arms around herself, thinking. She looked so young like this, shaky and small on the floor. "Help," she whispered. "I think."

"Awesome," he said, and then shuffled close enough to sit beside her on the floor. He leaned back against his workbench and wrapped one arm around her. She tensed up, but then settled again, letting the warmth of his arm soak into her skin.

"Sorry," she murmured again, reaching up to wipe away her tears.

"I'm gonna say this one more time: totally fine. Don't worry about it. This has happened before, huh?"

She sniffed and gave him a questioning look.

He gestured at the ceiling. "That isn't F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s standard operating procedure. I'm assuming you asked her to say that if anything went wrong."

Maggie shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah. I haven't had one that bad in… in a while, though." Her face twisted. "Every time I think I'm done with it, I push myself too far, and…" she spread her hands, gesturing to her current situation.

Tony squeezed her into his side. "Wanna talk about it?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "There was therapy, which was hard enough, but then…" she swallowed. "Fixing the wings, I just… I thought it'd be fine, because I've worked on them plenty of times since HYDRA, but something about it today just… brought me back. Making the wings, being… empty."

Tony's brow furrowed. "And then I touched your back.  _Shit._ "

"Not your fault," she murmured. "But it… for a second I thought you were  _them_ , about to cut me open, and I… reacted. And I lost touch with where I was."

Tony nodded, his heart heavy. The adrenaline was wearing off and his wrist was starting to hurt a lot more – he didn't think it was broken, just sprained, but that would have to go on the backburner for now. Maggie was pressed against his side from shoulder to hip, and her whole body was shaking.

"Y'know," he said after a few moments of silence. "I get panic attacks."

She blinked and turned her head to look at him. "You do?"

His free hand came up to tap a rhythm against his chest. "Ever since New York happened. Bad ones, too. First time it happened I thought I'd been poisoned – it felt like I was dying." Maggie leaned into him, listening quietly. "I ended up getting a therapist of my own, working through it. I'm better nowadays, though I still get bad ones from time to time." He stared at the far wall, still tapping his chest. "Sucks, huh?"

"Yeah," she mumbled, curling her knees toward her chest. "Sucks."

Tony tipped his head back, one arm still wrapped around her. "How'd you do it, back when you first got out? Can't have been easy."

Maggie tensed a little, but she didn't pull away. "I think you know the answer to that," she murmured, watching his face.

_Oh, right._

There was a long silence, but not necessarily an angry one. That was progress, maybe.

"He used to get them too," she said, voice so low that he wouldn't have been able to hear her if he wasn't right next to her. Tony's eyes closed. "He'd forget who he was. Had nightmares. Sometimes he'd think he was back in the war, falling from a train. Sometimes he thought he was still with Zola, strapped to a table." Tony's jaw clenched, but he didn't stop her. Maggie saw the obvious conflict on his face, though, and sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm just… it wasn't easy, but it'd have been near impossible without him. But I shouldn't put that on you, I'll be quiet now."

Tony didn't open his eyes, but he also didn't pull his arm away. They sat together in silence.

Then Dum-E let out a loud  _beep_ that made them both jump. "Oh god," Maggie said, pulling away from Tony and scrambling to her feet. "Dum-E, I'm sorry!"

Tony climbed to his feet as well, and watched as his sister fussed over the tipped-over robot, checking his wiring and hinges and then pulling him upright as if he weighed nothing. Dum-E was a little indignant at having been left alone so long, but he wasn't one to hold grudges – within seconds he was grabbing at Maggie's clothes again, poking and prodding her as if checking for injuries. She sniffed, and his claw shot up to her face, whirring at the tear-soaked skin he found there. She batted him away, smiling, and Tony cocked his head at her.

"Feeling better?"

She fended off another of Dum-E's grabs, and looked over at Tony. "I'll be okay. Can I stay here?"

"Does the Pope wear a funny hat?"

Maggie blinked.

"Wait, don't tell me you've never seen the Pope."

Her face twisted. "I know what a Pope  _is_ …"

"Christ Almighty. F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Picture of the Pope, stat." As the hologram came up, Tony walked toward Maggie and carefully wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. "You can stay, Maggot, but I'd give the wings a rest for today. Let's do something fun."

 

* * *

 

That evening, Pepper walked into the workshop and stopped dead at what she found. The workshop speakers, meant to be used for F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice interface, were blasting rap music. Maggie was standing on top of Tony's workbench, dressed in a bright yellow hazmat suit minus the helmet, dancing to the beat and – was she  _singing_? Pepper blinked and realized that Maggie was perfectly keeping up with the rapper, words flying a mile-a-minute out of her mouth as she danced in her hazmat suit.

Tony, Dum-E, and U were her audience. Dum-E and U were wrapped in caution tape, their claws nodding to the music, and Tony was doubled over laughing as his sister sang along to the chorus now, her arms spread wide and her voice clear. Tony had a bandage wrapped around his right wrist, but the end had come loose and was stained with something that looked like cordial.

Pepper stood in the doorway for the rest of the song, which Maggie ended by springing into a handstand on top of the workbench, the baggy hazmat suit slumping over her face.

Tony shot off his stool and gave her a standing ovation, which Pepper joined him in after a moment of shock. Maggie heard the extra set of hands and neatly flipped off the table, landing on both feet and looking around for the newcomer. Her face was flushed and her hair was strewn all over her face. She looked young, and happy, and Pepper couldn't help the smile that spread across her own face at the sight of it.

"Hey, Pepper," Maggie smiled.

She didn't get a chance to reply because Tony, still laughing, smacked the bench and gasped: " _How_ do you know how all the words?  _Why_ do you?"

Maggie shrugged, grinning, and pushed the suit sleeves up to her elbows. "I like the song. And I've got a good memory."

Pepper shook her head fondly, smiling at the odd performance she'd walked into. "And why are you wearing a hazmat suit?"

Maggie turned to face her. "Oh this is my rap persona, Slim Plutonium. Dum-E and U are my backup singers." She gestured to the caution-tape-wrapped robots, who beeped simultaneously.

Pepper shook her head again. "Well I'd ask  _why_ , but if you're anything like Tony then I know there's usually no good reason. I came to ask if you guys wanted dinner?"

Tony and Maggie simultaneously turned to the clock, blinking at the time.

"Oh, right," Maggie said. "Uh, yeah, I'm starving." She shoved her sleeves up again and walked to the door, but Pepper held up a finger.

"You're not wearing a hazmat suit to dinner."

Maggie grinned. "Depends what's for dinner."

"Your dinner is not a biochemical threat."

Tony snorted, and Maggie reluctantly stripped off the suit. Once the siblings had freed the robots from the caution tape and left the workshop, Pepper fell into step beside them.

"So you guys had a good day, then?" she asked wryly.

Maggie and Tony shared a glance.

"Yeah," Tony eventually answered. "Yeah, we did."

 

* * *

 

Ross hadn't forgotten about Maggie. He visited the facility at least once every two weeks, in the name of 'monitoring progress'. It usually meant he wandered around making Avengers staff very uncomfortable, and visited Maggie in her cell to hold the threat of imprisonment at the Raft over her head. Tony kept up his usual unflappable façade, but Maggie could tell that the visits bothered him. And she didn't fail to notice that whenever Ross came by he would come to her cell to make threats, and then would go to Tony to ask him to do something or other for the Accords Committee. She didn't like the pattern at all.

Ross didn't do  _nothing_ , however. He made good on his promise to the public to gather information, bringing in investigators from the CIA, FBI, JTTF and even NATO. Separately, of course. Each time a new investigator arrived Maggie was brought to one of the facility's many meeting rooms to give an account of her time in HYDRA, and her role in the events in Germany. She gave them the facts; detailing missions, handlers, victims, crimes. It was exhausting, particularly when they asked question after question. They all wanted to know more about how she'd been controlled, and about the minute details of her various missions. Half the time she didn't know the significance of one victim over another, but she hoped they did. She hoped they would give her victims' families more information.

Each interview was exhausting. She wasn't allowed to have Tony, Rhodey, Pepper or Vision in the room with her, so it was just her and a group of suits, delving into the specifics of the worst years of her life. Usually the investigators were wary of her, flinching at her barest movement. Others spoke to her like a child, their words dripping with condescension. Others were professional, respectful. They were the rarest ones, but Maggie was endlessly appreciative of them. Each account was difficult, and yet she couldn't make herself skim over details, couldn't conceal the truth. It might have been easier if she did, but she was, as Tony had said, a very honest person.

Dr Nguyen wasn't happy about the interviews, but she didn't have any authority to stop them, so she gave Maggie techniques to keep calm in the face of pointed questions, and they talked through whatever new traumas had been unearthed each week.

Tony saw the toll the interviews took on Maggie, but he didn't have any power to stop them either. And once every two weeks Ross would stalk around Maggie's cell and talk about  _terrorism charges_ or  _24 hour psychiatric monitoring_ , and then he'd go to Tony and ask him to come to some pro-Accords event or press conference, or to accept a certain mission, and the cycle would go on.

The Avengers were wound tightly, and Maggie felt as if some heavy doom was hanging over her head, moments from dropping. She wondered how long she had. She wondered if she could bear the weight.

 

* * *

 

Early September, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"If you glare any harder at that TV, it's going to explode."

Maggie jumped, and turned to Pepper. They were sitting on one of the Avengers common room couches, watching coverage of the Avengers' latest mission in South America. Pepper was tense, but she was used to waiting for Tony to come back from missions, and she had a routine: she was painting her toes and drinking a smoothie, waiting for her face mask to dry. She was wearing yoga pants and a loose t-shirt, and her long auburn hair was twisted into a knot on top of her head.

Maggie had declined the smoothie, the face mask, and the nail polish, too focused on the TV.

"I'm not  _glaring_ ," she protested, rubbing her arm and turning back to the TV. The Avengers were fighting a corrupt militia in Venezuela. This was Rhodey's second mission in the field, after a successful round of trial runs in his new suit. The reporters on the ground weren't able to keep up with all the action, but Maggie saw enough shots of heavy artillery and advanced tech to make her nervous.

"Maybe not glaring," Pepper conceded. "But something's bothering you."

Maggie gestured at the TV. "How do you do this? Cope with the stress of waiting for them to come back?"

Pepper put down her nail polish with a  _clink_ , and her eyes flicked up to the TV. Vision was standing amidst a hail of bullets, turning admonishing eyes on the militia members.

"Well," Pepper began. "For a long time, I didn't cope. But… I realized that Tony is going to do this. He's hardwired to save the world, and that's a part of him that I couldn't change if I wanted to. He knows that it can't be his one sole drive in life, which is how we make a relationship work, but it's still hard."

Maggie twisted her fingers together, her knee bouncing anxiously. "I'm not good at waiting. I wish I could be out there, making sure the mission is a success, instead of just being… helpless." After a second, she turned to Pepper and winced. "Sorry."

Pepper waved a hand, leaning back on the couch and taking another sip of her smoothie. "Don't worry about it, I know what you mean. Would you really want that? To get back into the fight?"

She blinked. "I… yeah. Yeah, I would."

"Even after…?" Pepper drew her feet up onto the couch, curling in on herself, and gave Maggie her full attention.

"Most of the fighting I've done in my life has been… for the wrong people. The wrong reasons." Maggie swallowed, frowning at the memories. "I've only had a few chances to fight for the right thing, and it… it felt good. Like it's what I'm meant to be doing."

Pepper smiled. "Like your brother, then."

Maggie returned the smile. "He's done a better job at being a hero than I could ever hope to."

They both turned to watch the TV screen, where Iron Man was raining down EMPs on the well-equipped militia. The fight was loud, bursting with explosions, and each new volley of gunfire or scream made the tension in Maggie's gut curl tighter.

After a long moment, Pepper spoke again. "Maybe one day you'll get to do that again. Be a hero."

She huffed a laugh. "I doubt it."

A guttural  _boom_ emanated from the TV, and the shaky handheld-camera footage caught a flash of red and gold hurtling out of the sky. Maggie shot out of her seat and stared as the red-and-gold blur disappeared, and the fighting seemed to amp up. She saw Vision soar across the screen, shooting golden beams from his forehead, and War Machine laying down covering fire. But she didn't see Iron Man.

"Where is he," she breathed, eyes glued to the screen. Pepper appeared by her side. Her hand slipped into Maggie's.

"He'll be okay," Pepper said, her voice thready. She still had the sticky green mask on her face. "If he's not, I'll kick his ass."

Maggie laughed despite herself. She and Pepper stood side-by-side and hand-in-hand in front of the TV for the rest of the fight, eyes fixed to the shaky, blurry footage. When the news crew got a shot of Iron Man walking onto the Quinjet at the end of it all, scorched and dusty, both women let out simultaneous breaths of relief and reached for each other. Maggie buried her face in Pepper's shoulder and breathed out. The other woman smelt like peppermint and cucumber, and she was stronger than Maggie had expected, clutching her as if her life depended on it.

"Okay," Pepper said, pulling away. There were tear tracks in her face mask, but Maggie didn't mention it. "Okay, I'm going to go have a martini. You want one?"

"Yes, please."

 

When the Avengers returned a few hours later, Pepper was tipsy but hiding it remarkably well. Except the Avengers didn't debrief and come to the common room as they usually did. Instead only Rhodey appeared, his face grim. He took in Maggie and Pepper's expectant faces, and the lines on his face only deepened.

"You'd better come with me," he said.

Maggie's stomach dropped. "What happened?" She shot to her feet, closely followed by Pepper, and bounded across the room to Rhodey.

He held up his hands. "Tony got hit by an anti-aircraft missile-" the blood drained from Maggie's face so he was quick to add – "he's okay! F.R.I.D.A.Y. ran his vitals while he was in the suit and she said he'd be okay, but I figured you'd want to be there."

Pepper grabbed Maggie's arm, more for support than anything else. Maggie turned to her, and saw that the other woman's face was grim and determined. "Lead the way, Rhodey."

As they walked to the medical wing, going as fast as Rhodey's exo-suit could take him, Rhodey explained what had happened. "The militia had way better tech than the intel led us to believe. We didn't think they had anything capable of actually affecting the armor until he got hit. He managed to get back into the fight to end it, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. said the blast ruptured his spleen and caused some internal bleeding. The doctors were taking a look at him when I left."

Maggie's hands were shaking. She thought the armor was meant to be impenetrable, how could a black market weapon do so much damage? But she kept her face blank and her body steady as they walked to the medical wing, keeping herself from breaking into a run because Rhodey was leading the way and Pepper still had a death-grip on her arm. She was used to concealing her feelings.

 

When they finally burst through the med-bay doors, they found Tony lying on a sterile white hospital bed, shirtless and covered in bruises. Dr Helen Cho stood by his head as a nurse cleaned various abrasions across his torso. Vision stood in the corner, looking at a holographic array of scans. Everyone looked up when the newcomers entered, and Tony gave them a sheepish grin.

"So it seems the armor's abdominal plating could do with some reinforcement."

"Oh my god," Pepper said, her voice shaky, and released Maggie to rush across the med-bay to Tony. "Are you okay?"

Dr Cho cleared her throat. "He'll be okay, the rupture isn't serious. He needs a blood transfusion, a few hours in the Cradle and then some rest. We're just setting it up now."

Pepper let out a breath and leaned down to kiss Tony. Rhodey went to join Vision.

Maggie was still standing in the doorway, staring at the scene before her. Tony was smiling up at Pepper, already cracking jokes, but his body told a different story. She could  _see_ where the missile had hit – ground zero was his upper left abdomen, a deep purple epicentre of bruises that radiated outwards. His whole left side was swollen. There were abrasions and cuts across his abdomen and chest, where the armor must have scraped his skin. She also noticed a pearly white ring of scarring where his arc reactor used to be. Her eyes flicked to the holographic array in the corner of the room, where the scans showed the trauma that Tony's body had taken.

Each bruise and bloody gash turned Maggie's stomach. Tony seemed larger than life sometimes – he acted like he was invincible, and she had started to believe it. But here was the evidence to the contrary. Her chest felt tight.

Maggie swallowed and tuned back into the conversation between Tony, Pepper and the doctor in time to hear Dr Cho telling Tony that the supply of blood he kept on-hand at the facility had gotten low.

"Take my blood," Maggie blurted out, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. They all stared at her for a few seconds.

Dr Cho was the first one to recover. "I'm not certain that would be wise, given your… enhancements." Dr Cho hadn't been on the team that had assessed Maggie when she first arrived at the facility, but they had met since. She was professional and yet friendly, something that Maggie appreciated.

Rhodey cocked his head. "Cap gave Barton blood that one time and nothing bad happened then."

"Maggie and Mr Stark do share the same blood type," Vision added. When everyone looked away from him, he caught Maggie's eye and nodded once.

Tony, who had been staring at Maggie with a look of consternation on his face, shook his head. "Maggie, you don't have to do that-"

"Well I'm going to," she interrupted. She finally moved, striding across the room and making herself comfortable in the plastic seat by the bed. She rolled up her sleeves, kicked her feet up on the edge of Tony's bed, and then stared down Dr Cho until she nodded her permission with a sigh. The nurse started prepping a transfusion bag.

Pepper came over to put her hand on Maggie's shoulder, and Maggie smiled up at her. But when the nurse came over with the needle, she tensed up and gently pulled Pepper's hand away. "Thank you," she murmured. "But I'm not great with needles, and I need to not feel like I'm being held down."

"Sorry, of course," Pepper gave her a watery smile, then went back to hold Tony's hand. Tony was still watching Maggie with a furrowed brow, but he didn't say anything.

Maggie didn't look at the needle as it took her blood. She didn't look at anyone else in the room, and she certainly didn't look at Tony, with his bruised, breakable body. She stared out the med-bay windows, watching a squad of Avengers agents run drills on the grass. She hated the feeling of the metal in her flesh, in her veins, and the subtle sounds of machinery whirring and latex snapping. It sent chills down her spine.

But if this was how she could help her brother, there wasn't a person on earth who could stop her.

 

Maggie stayed silent in the plastic chair as Tony got the blood transfusion, and was moved into the Cradle. Tony on the other hand didn't shut up, and generally annoyed everyone until it was just him and Maggie in the room. For a few minutes the only sounds were the soft whirring and clicks of the Cradle as it worked away at Tony's abdomen. He lay on his back with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

"You okay, Maggie?" he asked.

Maggie dragged her eyes away from the window and turned to look at her brother, ankles crossed and seemingly at ease after he'd almost died.

"You don't have to keep doing this," she murmured.

He gestured at the Cradle's blue light. "Well Dr Cho said I've got at least another thirty minutes, so…"

"No, I mean…" she sighed, her head tipping back until she was looking at the ceiling too. "I mean  _fighting._ I know you retired after Ultron, you got out. You don't have to start again just because… because the others are gone."

She heard the squeak of hospital sheets as Tony's head swiveled to look at her. She turned and met his eyes for the first time since she'd entered the room, and her heart thudded when she saw the gravity in his expression.

He sighed. "Who else is going to do it?"

And Maggie desperately wanted to say  _me_ , but she couldn't. So she stayed silent, curled up in her chair, watching a machine put her brother back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Maggie raps to is Can't Hold Us by Macklemore ft. Ryan Lewis. For reasons. I apparently can't stop making Maggie do absurd things.


	53. Chapter 53

 

September 8th, 2016  
Avengers Tower, New York City

"I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to bust me out of the facility. Actually, scratch that, I'm  _100 percent_ sure you're not allowed to."

Tony shrugged at Maggie as the helicopter touched down on the landing pad of Avengers Tower. "Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Or alternatively, better to not tell anyone at all."

Maggie rolled her eyes at her brother and went back to staring out the window. It wasn't like she had any real chance of escaping – she had the Manacle firmly fixed to her wrist, and Vision had accompanied she and Tony into New York City. He was sitting across from her in the helicopter in plain trousers and a button-up-shirt, reading a book. He'd wanted to fly by himself into the city, but Tony said it would draw too much attention.

Maggie had been glued to the window for most of the short flight. It was nice to be in the air again. It wasn't the same as flying by herself with the wind running over her wings, looking down at the world below, but it was better nothing.

She'd been to New York before – hell, she'd spent the first five years of her life here – but she'd never really had a chance to admire it. Whenever she'd visited as the Wyvern she hadn't exactly been sightseeing. The city was just as beautiful as it was in pictures, with the forest of skyscrapers bordered by gleaming ocean, and Maggie had grinned when she caught a glimpse of green Central Park – she remembered Jarvis and Ana taking her there one Sunday morning with a picnic blanket and a basket of sandwiches.

As the helicopter closed in on Manhattan, Maggie had craned her neck until she saw Brooklyn, and in the distance the Ferris wheel on Coney Island. Her heart had pounded and she'd felt an odd swoop in her stomach, at being so close to Bucky's home and yet who knew how far away from Bucky himself.

But now she was on top of  _Avengers Tower_ , and the excitement was back. The tower was incredible, an asymmetric design of glass and steel, unique amongst the other skyscrapers. And totally self-sustainable. The glowing blue  _A_ on the side of the tower was a little bittersweet, but Maggie had to admit it looked cool.

When the helicopter powered down and the door opened, she sprang out and whirled around to take in the New York skyline. The wind blew her hair away from her face, cooling her flushed cheeks. Her floral dress fluttered around her knees. Tony, dressed in a suit, climbed out after her and winced – it had only been a few days since his injury, and he was still tender. He'd decided that since he'd sold the tower, he ought to bring Maggie to see it while she could. And he was going to India tomorrow, so they wanted to spend time together before then. Vision put down his book and followed them out.

"This is  _so cool_!" Maggie exclaimed, turning on the spot to see everything she could. New York was beautiful from here, the Empire State building only a stone's throw away, and she couldn't decide whether to admire the city or get a better look at the tower.

Tony decided for her, rolling his eyes at her enthusiasm. "Come on, Maggot, let's go in. We might be hundreds of feet up, but they do amazing things with telescopic lenses these days and we don't need your face in the magazines."

"Right." She cast one more look out at New York, took a deep breath, and followed her brother into the tower.

Once they passed through the doors into the building itself, her mouth dropped open. "Did I say the outside was cool? I was wrong.  _This_ is cool."

The inside of Avengers Tower looked like an ultra-modern spaceship; all gleaming floors, abstract lines and shining glass. Of course, it was filled with boxes and machines wrapped in plastic and bubble wrap. A moving crew in white jumpsuits and caps bustled around each level, packing boxes and moving furniture. Maggie spotted Dum-E pushing a box across a raised platform on the other side of the open space, and she smiled at the robot. Tony had brought him back to the tower a few days ago partly as punishment because Dum-E had started a small fire in the workshop, and partly to frustrate Happy.

Remembering the ex-bodyguard she had heard so much about, Maggie glanced around the open space of the upper tower floors. She didn't have to look for long, though. The elevator doors to her left opened to reveal a bulky, harried looking man in a suit. He spotted Tony, Maggie and Vision by the door to the helipad and rushed over, his face brightening.

"Boss!" he called before any of them could say a word. "There're so many things I need you to sign, there's been an issue with regulations about transporting some of the lab machinery-" he reached them and brandished a clipboard bursting with papers. Tony took one look at the forms and ducked behind Maggie, grabbing her arms and using her as a human shield.

" _No_ , Happy, we talked about this!" Tony protested. "What's the point of having an Asset Manager if I still have to manage my assets?" Happy closed his mouth and frowned, trying to sidestep Maggie to get to Tony. But Tony merely dodged to the side, spinning Maggie with him. Vision watched them with a smile on his face.

"Happy," Tony said placatingly, "remember how I said I was coming with a visitor? Here's a mini-me!"

Maggie scoffed and elbowed Tony in the ribs – gently, since he was still healing – so he'd let her go. "If I was a mini-you I'd have to drop a few brain cells and start wearing way too much hair gel."

He scowled at her and rubbed his ribs, but she wasn't looking at him anymore. Happy had stopped trying to get around Maggie and finally seemed to see her.

"Oh," he said, his eyes widening. He lowered the clipboard.

She stuck out her hand. "Maggie Stark. Nice to meet you."

He took it in a firm, slightly sweaty grip. "Happy Hogan. Nice to meet you too." He was staring at her like he couldn't quite believe she was real.

She smiled. "You're the Asset Manager for Stark Industries, right?"

He let go of her hand. " _Yes_ ," he said, nodding. "Yes, I am." He turned to Tony, who was watching their exchange with an amused glint in his eye. "I like her," he announced, then turned back to Maggie. "I like you."

"Tony said you guys have been friends for a while, I've heard a lot about you."

"You have?" Happy glanced at Tony, who just shrugged, and then turned back to her. "Well yeah, it's been… god, over fifteen years." He put his hands on his hips. "Hasn't been easy though, I'll tell you that right now."

"I bet," she said with a wry smile.

"Hey now-" Tony interrupted, but was cut off by Happy's cellphone ringing. Happy fished the phone out of his pocket, scowled at the screen, then hit the end call button.

"You can grab that if you need to," Maggie said, "I know you must be busy."

Happy shrugged and glanced at Tony again. "It's the kid calling me  _again_ about-"

Tony made a  _zip it_ gesture, and Maggie raised an eyebrow.

"Kid?"

"It's nothing," Tony said, waving a hand. "Anyway, Happy–"

She didn't let it go that easily, though. "If you have some secret love child then I want to–"

"Maggie, it is very much not a secret love child. Drop it."

She smirked and raised her hands. "Dropped."

Vision took that moment to step in. "Mr Stark, if you and Maggie would like to take a walk around the tower, I would be more than happy to assist Mr Hogan in his asset management issues."

Happy seemed – well,  _happy_ – with that, so Tony slung his arm around Maggie's shoulders and steered her away from his friend and the android. They walked in silence for a few moments, striding over the gleaming floor toward a set of stairs.

Maggie broke the silence. "So is it a bouncing baby niece or nephew?"

"I will push you down these stairs."

 

Tony wasn't the best tour guide, because he got distracted and sometimes flat-out refused to answer Maggie's questions just to annoy her, but she thoroughly enjoyed her tour of the tower. It was a marvel of sustainable energy and modern engineering, though she could see how Tony had taken what he learned here and made it better for the Avengers Facility. She was a little disappointed that the tower would soon belong to someone else, because she could tell there were a lot of memories in this place. This building had shown the world that Tony could build things that weren't weapons. This was the epicentre of Loki's attack on New York, and consequently the site of the Avengers' first victory. This was where the Avengers had lived and worked together, for years.

Maybe that was why Tony had decided to sell it.

The tower held memories for Maggie, too. Just being surrounded by the skyline of New York brought back hazy memories of her childhood in Manhattan. She told Tony this and he promised that he hadn't sold the old mansion, that they could go back whenever she liked. It sounded like he hadn't been there in a while, though.

She also remembered stealing the blueprints for Avengers Tower, before it had even been built. Tony didn't seem concerned about that, since HYDRA clearly hadn't acted on that information and they were all dead now anyway. He did, however, seem impressed that she'd managed to get her hands on the plans: "those were under pretty tight lock and key, Mags, you've got mad skills." She was uncomfortable with the praise, but shrugged it off and continued to enjoy her tour.

She even got a look at what had been Tony and Pepper's quarters, while they still lived in the Tower. It was as stupidly luxurious as she'd expected, with wall-to-wall windows, a huge bed with silk sheets, and rare artwork on the walls – Pepper's touch, no doubt. Mostly everything was in boxes, waiting to be moved out, but Maggie noticed a small ornament on the dresser.

"Hey," she said, wonderingly. "I recognize that." She strode across the room and peered at the ornament. It looked like… a miniature model of a jet pack? It was mounted on a metal base plate, and the design was rudimentary at best, but…

Recognition hit her in a rush, and her eyes welled with tears. "Oh my god."

Tony had followed her to the dresser, and he looked down at the jet pack model with a complex array of emotions crossing his face. "You did always want to fly," he murmured. He saw the tears shining in her eyes and wrapped one arm around her. "Pepper found that a few years ago, she thought it'd be nice to display it."

Maggie swallowed. "A few years ago? So before you knew…?"

"Yeah," he said heavily. "It was good to keep it around. Reminded me what a little asshole you were." That made her laugh, and he grinned at her. "But now I've got  _you_ to remind me of what an asshole you are, so you should probably take this off my hands." He swiped the model off the dresser and offered it to her. Maggie took it with shaking fingers, eyeing the little details of thrusters and engines.

"Huh," she said. "This design never would have worked, look at the power relays."

"I know, right?" he agreed. "I tried to tell Pepper that, but she said something about its value 'not being in the success of the design'. Crazy." He squeezed her, then let her go. "Do you remember that day you asked me about jet packs?" he asked. He'd turned away, and his voice was carefully casual, but Maggie could hear his concealed hope.

"You mean the day we exploded a bunch of missiles in Stark Industries' demonstration bay?" Tony spun around, surprised, and she grinned at him. "Yeah, that was pretty memorable."

He returned her smile, taking in the sight of her standing tall with the New York skyline behind her, holding her jet pack model in one hand. It was a moment he'd never thought he'd be able to have, but it was bittersweet – he couldn't help but be angry at HYDRA all over again, for the years they'd stolen. He shook away the thoughts, and went back to explaining how he'd installed an Arc Reactor at the bottom of the sea near New York to make the tower fully self-sustainable.

As he spoke, Maggie went back to admiring the room. Her eyes were drawn to a beautiful Turkish rug laid out on the floor – it was covered in plastic in preparation for the move, but she could see the rich red color and minute detailing of flowers and leaves. It looked expensive.

Tony saw her looking. "Oh, that. Pepper got it in Istanbul, I think. We had a holiday there after all the stuff with Extremis." He made a face at the memory.

Maggie brightened. "I love Istanbul! Did you see the Hagia Sophia?"

He froze, and turned to stare at her. "You've been to Istanbul."

"Yes, I-" She opened her mouth to tell him all about her travels through Turkey, then recalled who had been with her at the time, and shut her mouth.

Tony threw his hands up. "Okay, I've got to know. Where have you  _been_ since HYDRA? I know you were in Argentina, don't even try to pretend you weren't, but somehow you ended up in Romania? And now you're saying you were in Turkey?"

Maggie watched his face carefully. He seemed more annoyed than angry, but there was a reason they hadn't spoken about this yet. It was one thing for her to tell him about her time in HYDRA, it was another for her to talk about what she'd been doing when she was free, making her own choices. "You really want to know?"

He crossed his arms. "Yes."

"Really?" she pressed, and took a step towards him. "Because I'm not going to pretend Bucky wasn't with me, Tony, if you want to hear where we went then he's going to be a part of the story." Tony flinched at the name, but he didn't back down.

"Tell me." He seemed to realize how aggressive he was being, and uncrossed his arms. "If you want."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, but we're not going to stand in here the whole time. Show me the rest of the tower?"

He agreed, and they left the room. Maggie sighed, turning the jet pack model over in her hands as she wondered where to start. She eventually cleared her throat, wiped her palms on her dress, and began. "We went south, first." Tony took a sharp breath through his nose at the word  _we_ , but she kept going. "Traveled down into South America. I figured out who I was in Mexico, after I stole a laptop and googled fatal car accidents involving a young girl twenty-odd years ago. I found out  _you_  were alive thanks to Wikipedia."

Maggie's account of where she'd been over the past two years lasted through the rest of their tour of the tower. She told Tony where she and Bucky had traveled over the past two years, as they slowly got their minds back. Tony listened to her silently, asking the occasional question. At one point he sighed heavily and said, "you really just had to… to figure everything out from scratch, didn't you?"

"Sure did. I didn't know how to make choices, about basic stuff like what to eat and what to wear. I didn't know how to have a normal conversation, how to have  _fun._ But I figured it out, mostly, and I'm a person now."

He smiled sadly at that, and she continued. She told him about how they'd exposed the location of the HYDRA base in Belarus, about the little boy on the chairlift, about Vincent Silva and how he'd begged for his life. Tony grinned at her triumphs, frowned at her low moments, made teasing remarks and encouraged her to give more detail.

She didn't tell Tony much about Bucky, but she didn't leave him out either. In fact, this was probably the longest she'd ever spoken to Tony about Bucky.

She told him about the journey across Australia – he snorted when she explained what a  _Fuck You, HYDRA_  party was – and how they'd found out about Ultron's rise and fall. When Maggie explained how she'd done what she could to protect the world's major organisations and governments from Ultron's insidious reach, Tony gave her an odd look.

"What?"

"It's just… J.A.R.V.I.S. was out there too, protecting nuclear launch codes. He said that he'd noticed someone helping, but we were too busy with Ultron to worry about potential allies."

"So that was J.A.R.V.I.S.? I noticed him too." She smiled at the thought of helping her brother's original A.I. without even knowing it.

Tony gave her a half-smile, as if he was thinking the same thing. He'd been surprised to learn just how much Maggie had been invested in the Avengers' activities and success, without ever giving away her involvement. He'd known about the boy on the chairlift, but to know that she'd protected people in other, unseen ways was eye-opening.

"Anyway, after Ultron we realized we needed to be closer to the thick of things, in case we were needed. So we got on a plane to India, and traveled up to Europe."

She told him about the bank robbers, about her odd jobs, about her birthday celebrations and how they'd snuck into university lectures. She told him about the family she had spied on in the Ukraine, lowering her head and watching her feet as they walked into an elevator on the ground floor.

"I was on the bus back into Bucharest when I heard about the UN bombing. Got straight off the bus and headed for the safehouse, but I was too late. And… well, you know the rest."

The elevator doors closed, and Maggie and Tony stood in silence as they were whisked upwards. There wasn't any elevator music.

Finally, he spoke. "Were you ever going to come back?" His voice was strained, and he stared at the elevator wall. "Or were you planning on just… never seeing me for the rest of our lives?"

Maggie took a breath. She'd known this was coming at some point, she just hadn't expected it in an elevator, as she clutched a model she'd made when she was four years old. "I'm dangerous, Tony. I knew that by being around I'd only ruin your life, and… and look at what's happened!" She met his eye, and she knew they were both thinking about the media storm that was  _still_ raging, and Ross's 'visits'. "At best I'm your weakness. At worst I'm the one who'll end up hurting you. I thought it would be best for you if I stayed dead."

Tony reached up to pinch his nose. "But that's what siblings are  _for_ , Maggie! To be your weakness! It's not meant to be easy." He spread his hands and faced her. "I'd much rather worry about you and feel like shit half the time than for you to be dead. And I think I'd know, I've had both experiences."

She fell silent, her eyes wide. The elevator was filled with a ringing silence.

Tony cocked his head at her. "Why did you choose to stay?"

Her breath caught in her chest, and she glanced up at him. They both knew exactly what he was talking about, she could see the painful memories glittering in his dark eyes. But Tony seemed to take her hesitation as confusion.

"In Siberia," he clarified. "You could've had Heckle and Jeckle carry you onto the Quinjet, they would have figured out how to get the Manacle off you eventually. So why didn't you go?"

Maggie wanted to face this calmly, but she couldn't stop the tears that pooled in her eyes and slipped down her cheeks. She took a sharp breath and stepped backwards, using the cool surface of the elevator wall to center herself.

"I couldn't leave you," she said. "Not like that. Not at all." She'd known, as Steve pulled his shield out of the flickering arc reactor in Tony's chest, where she belonged. She loved Bucky, wanted to protect him, but there was no earthly way she could have left her brother bloody and betrayed in the cold Siberian snow. She'd barely known him at the time, but she'd known herself, and she knew what she was and wasn't capable of.

Tony's eyes suddenly gleamed with tears as well, and he went in for a hug. He was pretty strong, and his arms were warm and tight around her. Maggie dropped her head on his shoulder.

"You're a hugger," she murmured, slightly teasingly, but the teasing was undermined by how tightly she was holding him back.

"Just making up for lost time," he replied. "I'm glad you stayed."

"Me too." The words slipped out easily, and Maggie realized that she meant them whole-heartedly. She felt a pang of guilt – she had left Bucky injured and broken, after all, and now she had no idea where he was – but she couldn't deny that she didn't regret her choice, not one bit. And she knew, in that instinctive way that she knew Bucky inside and out, that he'd be happy for her.

The elevator doors slid open.

"Oh, hello," came Vision's calm voice, and Maggie and Tony pulled apart. Maggie wiped her eyes and smiled sheepishly at the android, who gave her a smile in return. She and Tony left the elevator.

"Are you ready to depart?" Vision asked. "The more time you spend out of the facility, Maggie, the more likely you are to be discovered."

"That's a comforting statistic," she replied, but nodded her agreement. Avengers Tower was incredible, but it wasn't a home anymore. And she felt too much like a visitor to be comfortable there.

"Alright, let's get out of here before Happy tries to get me to sign anything," Tony muttered, and they strode toward the helipad. Happy did manage to intercept them on the way out, but Tony artfully dodged the dreaded clipboard, and Maggie distracted him by saying:

"Bye, Happy. Good luck with Moving Day!"

He waved them off. "I don't need luck, it's all going to go off without a hitch."

 

On the helicopter ride out of Manhattan, Maggie watched the city pass below and thought about the unequivocal way Tony had accepted her into his life. It was almost terrifying. In such a short time they'd become inseparable, and Maggie knew in her bones that he'd always be on her side.

She held her jet pack model to her chest and made a promise to herself: no matter what the world threw at them, she'd protect Tony.  _That's what siblings are for._

 

* * *

 

The next day Tony went to India, so Maggie spent most of her time in her cell with some visits from Rhodey and Vision. Pepper was busy with Stark Industries at the moment, thanks to the upcoming move, and with getting Maggie legally recognized as an actual, alive person – getting her old social security number back was turning out to be a nightmare. Maggie had offered to help, but there wasn't realistically a lot she could do, and Pepper assured her she had it handled.

A few days later, Maggie was lying on her bed contemplating what to do about her broken wings when the Stark tablet that Tony had given her started to vibrate on her desk. Frowning, she rolled out of bed and padded toward the tablet.

 _Incoming call: Tony Stark._ The whole screen was taken up by a photo of an issue of  _Forbes_  with Tony gracing the cover. Maggie rolled her eyes and hit the  _accept call_ button.

The  _Forbes_  cover was replaced by Tony's real-time face. He was dressed in a smart suit, standing on a hotel room balcony with a city skyline behind him.

"Miss me already?" she asked, taking a seat at her desk.

"Just checking you haven't burned the place down yet," he replied, toasted her with a condensation-covered glass and took a sip. He was wearing glasses, and she could see some kind of HUD illuminated in the lenses – they were no doubt connected to F.R.I.D.A.Y.

"I wouldn't burn the facility down," she replied indignantly, putting her feet up on the desk. "I'd use explosives."

"Smart."

Maggie took a closer look at the screen. It looked warm where he was, the sky behind him smoggy, and she ran her eyes over the skyline in the background. "Hm. You know, since you're in Mumbai you should check out the Elephanta caves, they're beautiful."

"I will if I get time," he replied absently, then frowned. "Hang on, I didn't tell you where I-" he glanced over his shoulder, cursed, and then stepped off the balcony and into his room. "Freaking superspies and their stupid observation skills."

She smiled at him as he continued to grumble and pace around his room. But then she noticed the furrow in his brow, the tightness around his eyes. "Tony, is something wrong?"

He squinted at the camera. "Why would something be wrong?"

"Well, not that I'm not happy to talk to you, but you've never called me before," she pointed out. "And you look kind of… distracted."

He sighed, and took a seat on what looked like a very expensive gold-embroidered couch. "Okay, so… say there's this guy I know," he said, taking another sip of his drink. "He's trying to take on more responsibility, but he's not ready for that yet. I don't know how to get that through to him, though."

Maggie blinked. "Is… is the guy you?"

"What? No, this is hypothetical."

"Okay…" she thought it over. She didn't really understand what was going on, but it was clearly playing on Tony's mind, so she'd do what she could to help. "Well, if this  _hypothetical guy_ thinks he's ready for more, then he's probably going to  _do_ more. And if he's not ready, then he'll find out the hard way. I don't know if there's much you can do about it other than make sure he learns from whatever mistake he makes. Support him."

Tony rubbed his jaw, looking thoughtful. "A teaching moment."

"Sure," she said. "Is this about someone at the company? Because maybe it would be better to ask Pepper-"

"Nope," he said, finishing his drink. "Totally hypothetical."

"Sure."

He seemed to be thinking about what she'd said, so silence stretched over the line as they each reclined in their separate chairs. Maggie realized that she'd never actually video-chatted with someone before. She and Bucky had spoken on the phone, but never for longer than five minutes at a time, and usually just to exchange details about their next meeting point. Sitting back at a desk chair, talking to her brother on the other side of the world… it felt odd, but nice. Like something a normal person might be doing. Then she remembered that she was technically imprisoned, and her optimism ebbed.

"Hey," Tony eventually said, his eyes focused off-screen. "If you could go back, have a chance at being a kid again, what would you want from life? Friends, a good college, a job, right? That's what kids want?"

Maggie's eyebrows shot up at the question, and a small burn of hurt bloomed in her chest. She knew he didn't mean to upset her, but there was something in the distracted way he asked the question that made her think he didn't really have  _her_  in mind. She swallowed the hurt, and thought about it. But it was hard to imagine that life for herself, and the silence stretched on.

Tony blinked, and finally looked right at the camera. "I'm sorry, Marzipan, that was a dumb question, I shouldn't have-"

"It's okay," she said, shooting him a quick smile. "Honestly… I don't really do 'what if's, Tony. This is the way my life is," she said, pulling the tablet back to encompass her face and the pale grey room she was kept in. "And I can't go back. So I have to live it the way it is."

He frowned, glancing down. "Huh."

After another long silence, she asked "Why are you asking about what kids want, anyway? Is this about the secret love child?" His head shot up and he glared at her, but Maggie's eyes just went round. "Is Pepper pregnant?"

" _No_ ," Tony hissed, "you little… can't I ask hypothetical questions?"

"You  _can_ , but I seriously doubt that you  _are_."

"That's it, I'm hanging up. Hope you don't accidentally blow yourself up, that would be tragic."

Maggie burst out laughing, and she just managed to shout: "so what college is my secret niece or nephew going to?" before Tony ended the call and the screen went dark.

She laughed to herself, returned the tablet to her desk and span around in her chair. When she finished spinning her eyes landed on her dresser, and the postcards she'd lined along the wall: Machu Picchu,  _Carta de Amor_ , a birds-eye view of Darwin, New Delhi's Askhardham Temple. Her smile didn't fade but it softened, became a little sad. On the back of each card, she knew, was a short inscription in familiar, old-fashioned handwriting.

Maggie closed her eyes and turned her face toward the warm sunlight filtering through her window.

_Wish you were here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but we're in the Homecoming storyline now! Drop a comment, let me know what you think :)


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, guys!

 

September 14th, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"Thank you so much for this, Vis, really. I know there are people at the facility who normally do this, but I doubt they'd be super comfortable with me as their customer."

"You are quite welcome. Though I must stress that I've never done this before."

"You've got the whole internet in your head. It'll be fine."

Maggie was sitting on a stool on a plastic sheet laid out in the Avengers common room, her hands clasped in her lap and a towel wrapped around her shoulders. Vision, in his standard middle-aged-professor outfit, eyed the scissors in his hand uncertainly, and then reached for Maggie's damp hair.

Maggie had been trying to work out how to get a haircut for about a week – her hair had gotten far too long and unmanageable, and after the umpteenth time waking up with her head looking like a rat's nest she was about ready to shave it all off. She was even willing to try cutting it herself, but she still wasn't really trusted with sharp things. And she knew the facility's on-staff hairdressers probably put up with a lot of weird stuff, but she didn't want to put them in the position of working with sharp scissors around an infamous felon. Thankfully, after moaning to Vision about it, her android friend had offered to put her out of her misery.

And despite his initial hesitance Vision seemed to know what he was doing, pinning up layers of her hair and then getting started near the back, wielding his scissors like a professional. Maggie had hated getting haircuts on the run, hated having a stranger holding a weapon so close to her skin while she was expected to sit still. But with Vision she felt safe.

"You know, if you had hair I would totally offer to cut it for you," she piped up, as a lock of hair tumbled over her shoulder and landed on the plastic sheet.

"I appreciate the sentiment," he replied. "Incidentally, I have been experimenting with synthetic matter manipulation."

Maggie resisted the instinct to turn around and look at him. "Like growing hair?"

"Not  _growing_  it, per se," he said, snipping another lock of hair. "But with enough practice, I believe I might have some success in simulating skin cells, hair, and other elements of human appearance, yes."

She did try to turn around at that, but Vision put his hand on her shoulder to keep her still. "That's incredible!" she exclaimed. "Not that you aren't incredible the way you are, Vis, I think we've established that I think you're about the most fascinating person I've ever met-"

"You have been rather effusive in your compliments," he agreed, and tapped her chin to get her to lean her head back.

"If you're ever up for a showcase then I'd love to see what you look like," she continued. "What did Wanda think about this?"

Vision actually sputtered at that, the scissors freezing an inch away from her head and his eyes going round. "I don't… I'm not sure what you-"

" _Relax_ ," Maggie laughed, craning her neck to look at him. "Your secret's safe with me."

Vision hadn't said anything to her about it, but a few weeks ago something in his manner had shifted – not dramatically, but Maggie didn't hang out with many people and she'd noticed the small differences. He was more relaxed, his smiles came easier, and he didn't fall into as many solemn, haunted silences. She wasn't sure if he and Wanda had actually met up again yet or if they were just in contact, but something had definitely happened.

Vision recovered from his shock, but he didn't resume cutting her hair. "Am I so predictable?" he asked, eyes falling to the floor.

"Not at all!" she replied, and span around on the stool. "Seriously, I know for a fact that Tony and Rhodey haven't noticed, last week I overheard them talking about ways they could get you out of your room." A frown crossed Vision's face. Maggie sighed. "Look, I'm sorry for springing that on you. I… I know I'm in kind of a weird position, morality-wise, but what you and Wanda do is none of my business, and I'm sure as hell not going to tell anyone. It's up to you to decide what makes you happy, and which, uh, legal documents you're willing to overlook." That just seemed to make his face fall further, so she reached out to touch his arm. "Vis, look at me." He did. "I'm happy for you. And if you get to help protect the world  _and_ be with someone who makes you happy, then that's a good thing."

Vision held her gaze for a few more seconds, then smiled. "You are a fascinating person yourself, Maggie Stark."

"Don't you forget it."

He shook his head, and turned her back around. "As for your original question, Wanda said that she would be happy to see me no matter my form."

Maggie smiled down at her lap. "Stop, I'll get a cavity."

"I believe the super-soldier serum in your physiology would make it supremely difficult for you to develop a dental cavity."

"Hey, if… if you want, could you tell Wanda that I say hi?" She asked as Vision started cutting her hair again. "And tell her that I owe her a joke."

"I shall pass it along."

Maggie smiled again, and her eyes drifted to the enormous TV display on the other side of the room. "Hey, isn't that that spider-guy?"

The scissors went still. "Yes, it appears so."

The screen showed news coverage of the Washington Monument – the headline at the bottom read  _Spider-Man saves students in dramatic rescue at the Washington Monument,_ and the footage showed a tiny red-and-blue figure crawling up the side of the tall structure like – well, like a spider.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y., could you unmute the television, please?"

The TV's sound cut in. "– previously only known for heroic acts on YouTube and his role in the Avengers incident in Germany, climbed up the historic monument to rescue an Academic Decathlon team from Queens. The team was trapped in a malfunctioning elevator, but the masked hero pulled them to safety before vanishing once more. Investigators are looking into the incident…"

The news replayed footage of Spider-Man's climb up the monument. Once he reached the top he swooped over a police helicopter, then used his webbing to swing from the helicopter and through a window into the monument. Maggie's eyebrows shot up.

"The guy's got moves," she muttered, recalling the agile way he'd flipped around her at the airport in Germany. The footage cut to a gaggle of traumatized-looking students in yellow jackets being escorted out of the Washington Monument. "Good on him."

"Indeed," Vision agreed.

Maggie cocked her head as the rescue footage played again. She'd been annoyed at Spider-Man when she fought him, but she'd also been impressed. He was fast, agile, and a lot stronger than she'd expected. He had also sounded incredibly young. She remembered how he'd called her brother  _Mr Stark_ , and his animated jabbering as he avoided her heel spurs.

"I thought Spider-Man was based in New York?" she wondered out loud. She didn't expect Vision to acknowledge her, because Spider-Man's identity was very much off-limits for her, and she wasn't disappointed. He returned to cutting her hair, and they watched the country react to Spider-Man's rescue.

 

* * *

 

Tony got back from his trip a few days later with a tan, but he didn't have a chance to see Maggie before Secretary Ross showed up with investigators from MI5, who'd just gotten off their flight from London. As Maggie sat with the investigators and tried to remember every mission she'd ever undertaken on British soil, Ross strong-armed Tony into attending a meeting about the Sokovian Accords with ambassadors from a few countries who hadn't signed.

When it was all over and Ross and his entourage were gone, Tony visited Maggie in her room. She was sitting with her back to the statue of her wings, looking out at the darkening sky. She glanced over her shoulder when he entered, nodded once, and then went back to staring out the window. Tony crossed the room and collapsed onto her couch.

"You cut your hair," he noted, pulling his glasses off and reaching up to rub at the headache forming between his eyes.

Maggie absently touched her dark hair, which had been cut to just above her shoulders. "Technically Vision cut it. How was India?"

"Hot. I went to those elephant caves you recommended. A monkey tried to steal my glasses. Are you okay?" He could only see part of her face from his sprawled position on the couch, but she looked a little distant.

"Not really," she murmured, eyes focused out the window. "I killed four people in the U.K."

He stilled. "Wasn't your fault, Maggie."

"They're still dead, though," she replied. "And I remember the looks on their faces when they realized they were going to die."

He watched her look out the window, her eyes haunted, and wished he knew what to say. After a few moments, she let out a long breath and glanced down at her hands. "But that's… that's on me, you don't need to worry about it."

"Don't tell me what to do," he retorted, and a small smile lifted her lips.

"Can we talk about something else?" she asked. "How did that thing with the hypothetical guy go?"

Tony leaned back in the desk chair and looked out at the forest. "It's… still going, but I think it's going well. Hypothetically, he did good work, so I'm thinking of rewarding him. Kind of a hypothetical promotion."

"That's nice."

"Yeah, I'm working on being… supportive," he said, his face twisting. "I don't know. It's a weird time for me, I feel itchy."

She laughed softly, still looking down at her hands. "Sounds like you should get that checked out by a doctor."

"Mm, probably."

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days Maggie noticed that Tony was working on something in the workshop that he was keeping secret. She didn't snoop, but one afternoon she did catch a glimpse of something that looked like… a suit? But she only saw it for a second, and she couldn't be sure. She shrugged and went back to the holographic model of her wings, trying to work out how to put them back together.

At this rate it was looking like she'd have to create more Adamantium to fix the broken wing seamlessly. But there wasn't a soul alive who knew that Maggie knew how to synthesise Adamantium, and she didn't exactly want to advertise the fact. She wasn't even sure if she  _should_ repair her wings. So more often than not she ended up perched on a workbench, Dum-E's claw resting on her knees, as she stared at the revolving blue model of her wings.

 

* * *

 

September 20th, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Maggie and Vision were in the common area playing another ill-advised round of chess when a new alarm sounded throughout the facility. Seconds later there was a resounding blast, and Maggie ran to the window in time to see something that looked like a missile launch from one of the facility buildings. It soared across the sky in the direction of New York, glinting in the sun.

Maggie whirled around, a look of alarm on her face, but Vision held up his hands.

"That was the Emergency Structural Support Thruster system," he explained.

"What the hell is that?" she asked, turning back to the window. The skies were clear and the alarm had stopped shortly after it began, but her heart was still pounding.

Vision was silent a moment, then added: "It appears there has been a maritime emergency in New York City. Mr Stark is at the scene and the Emergency Structural Support Thrusters will arrive in four seconds."

"Maritime emergency?" Maggie asked, turning away from the window. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., are news crews on the scene?"

In response, F.R.I.D.A.Y. powered up the TV screen on the other side of the room and flipped to a news channel. Maggie's mouth dropped open. The displayed live footage must have been taken from a news helicopter, showing a smoking yellow ferry split completely in two as it sagged in the water. But as Maggie watched, eyes round, dozens of glowing thrusters shot out of the sky and connected with the sides of the ferry, slowly but surely pushing it back together. Then she caught a glimpse of Iron Man, soaring around the vessel – which had  _Staten Island Ferry_ emblazoned on its side – using laser beams and cables to keep the ferry in one piece.

Maggie let out a breath and dropped onto the nearest couch. She should have anticipated it, but living at Avengers Facility was a high-stress situation.

"It seems Mr Stark has the situation under control," Vision supplied, and sat next to her. She nodded mutely. "Emergency services are on the scene, and readings from Mr Stark's suit show that there have been no fatalities."

"I'm glad," she sighed. "Hey, isn't that Spider-Man?" she leaned forward, eyeing the red figure that had just flipped up onto the ferry's roof. "It  _is_ Spider-Man. What's he doing there?"

Vision, as usual, didn't reply. They sat together on the couch and watched ships swarm around the smoking ferry, as excited newsreaders hypothesised wildly about terrorist attacks, a new supervillain in town, or even another round of crazy robots. Maggie watched the ongoing footage of the ferry rescue with interest, but she wasn't too worried. It seemed that the threat had been neutralized, and Iron Man had saved the day. At least he hadn't gotten injured this time.

 

Two hours later, Tony returned to the compound with a metal briefcase. Maggie and Vision, still on the common room couch, glanced up when he entered the room. He was dressed as smartly as ever in a dark suit, but he looked exhausted. His face was drawn and his brow pinched, and Maggie easily read the anger and frustration in his expression. She hadn't expected such a look on his face after a seemingly routine rescue, and it took her aback.

Tony took one look at the two of them on the couch, made a sour face, then dumped the metal briefcase by the door and strode toward the bar.

Maggie and Vision shared a glance. Neither of them were much good at nonverbal cues, so they had a short, whispered conversation, after which Vision shrugged, nodded, and got to his feet. He took one look at Tony, who was now rifling through the drinks cabinet, then raised a synthetic brow at Maggie and left the room.

Tony helped himself to a bottle of whiskey and a glass tumbler, then veered into the adjoining study area. Everything about his body language screamed  _I've had a terrible day, don't talk to me_ , but Maggie knew there were plenty of other places around the facility he could have gone. And yet he'd chosen to come here.

She smoothed down her jeans and got to her feet, taking a stop by the bar to grab a tumbler of her own before she followed Tony into the study. It was a soothing space with dark wooden walls, soft lighting, and shelves lined with books. Tony had taken a seat at a leather couch against the back wall, and he was already throwing back a glass of whiskey. He didn't look up at Maggie.

Sighing, she strode across the room, took a seat beside him, and then swiped his whiskey bottle off the coffee table to pour herself a glass.

"Kinda rude," Tony grumbled as he took another sip. He'd taken off his suit jacket, leaving him in a dark undershirt.

Maggie shrugged, and took a long draw from her tumbler. She grimaced, then asked: "What happened?"

He waved a hand as if to say  _nothing._

"Was it the ferry?" she asked. Tony sighed and leaned back in his seat. "I thought there weren't any casualties."

"There weren't," he said, eyes dark. "But it was close."

Maggie took another sip and used the movement to eye Tony's face – she took in the lines around his eyes, the anxious pinch between his eyebrows, and suddenly it all came together.

_This is about Spider-Man._

She finished her tumbler and poured another glass, waiting him out. He wouldn't have flounced into the common room like a dramatic teenager if he didn't want to talk about it.

Tony clenched his jaw and stared into his amber glass. She knew he didn't normally drink these days. Eventually, he opened his mouth again. "Do you think I'm like dad?"

Maggie blinked. She hadn't been expecting that. She eyed Tony's pensive, unhappy face, and honestly didn't know what he wanted to hear. She sighed and decided to go with honesty. "No."

He finally looked at her, resting one elbow on his knee and turning his head to her.

She met his eyes. "Of course, I didn't really know him," she added. "I don't think either of us did."

Tony made another sour face, and took a drink. "Really? Sanctimonious, cold, arrogant, unsupportive, emotionally unavailable. That's what I got from him. And none of that sounds like me?"

She frowned. "No. Did someone say it did?"

He gave her a hard look. " _I_ did."

"Well you're an idiot then."

He snorted. "I'll add 'idiot' to the list."

"No, I mean…" she sighed frustratedly, waving her free hand. "What's going on? You're not like that at all."

"It's…" he looked up at the ceiling. "I put my trust in someone who… I think I failed them. I mean, they screwed up, but I feel like it's my fault." He sagged in on himself, and reached out to pour himself another glass.

 _Spider-Man._ Maggie pursed her lips. "Failed them how?"

"By living up to dad's stellar mentoring techniques." He leaned back and toasted her with his newly-full glass.

She frowned again. "Dad wasn't our mentor. He was our father."

Tony took another long draw of his drink, but it didn't seem to relax him – if anything, the tension in his shoulders only increased, and his face fell further. "Well I wouldn't be any good at that either, clearly."

Maggie sat up straight, something sparking in her chest. "If you don't shut up right now, I swear I'll punch you in the face."

That shocked him into looking at her. His eyes darted from her face to her fist, and then a considering look entered his expression. "I might… deserve that."

She scowled. "Shut up."

"Shutting up." He went to sip his drink, but Maggie had had enough. She snatched the tumbler out of his hands and drained it. That done, she put down both of their glasses, then picked up the half-full whiskey bottle and put it to her lips. She drained that too, glaring at Tony the whole time as his eyes went rounder and rounder.

Once all the alcohol was gone and Maggie's mouth tasted like a distillery – but of course, she was totally sober – she turned on the couch to face her brother properly.

"Okay," she began. "Tony, I don't know what the hell happened but you  _cannot_ let dad's memory hang over you like this. I agree with you that he was not the father we needed, but you're not his carbon copy! You're made up of parts of him, sure. But you're also made up of mom." He still looked shocked at her whiskey consumption but she could tell he was listening now. "You're also made up of Jarvis. And Rhodey, and J.A.R.V.I.S. the A.I., and Vision, and F.R.I.D.A.Y., and Pepper, and me, god help you. And you might be an asshole some of the time" – he scowled at her – "but you're not an asshole, period. And I don't really remember where I was going with this, but just… go back to basics. Like when you're building something – if you screw it up, figure out where the screw up happened and fix it. Then try again, and when it fails in a new way you fix that, too. Whatever's wrong, you're not an idiot. You can fix it."'

Tony squinted at her. After a long moment of silence, he said "You are… suspiciously good at pep talks. Are you sure we're related?"

She shoved him, clearly a bit too hard for his slightly-inebriated state because he slipped off the couch and found himself on the dark wood floor. Maggie slid out of her seat and sat next to him, stretching her legs under the coffee table. There was a comfortable silence as Tony processed her words.

After a while, Maggie leaned over to elbow him. "Do you need me to beat up Spider-Man for you?"

He jumped and turned to her with wild eyes. "How did you-"

"I figured it out, I'm not a moron!" she said, rolling her eyes at him. Tony made a face. "Seriously, do you need me to do something? I could go beat him up right now, if you need–"

"I don't want you to beat him up, Jesus," Tony said, but he was laughing now. "You maniac." He sobered a little, his chin dropping onto his chest. "I did that well enough on my own."

She blinked. "You beat up Spider-Man?"

"No, I meant verbally." He was staring down at his lap, eyes dark.

"Hm. He seemed like a good kid. I'm sure he'll be okay."

"He  _is_ a good kid, that's the problem."

Maggie leaned over again and put her arms around him, giving him an awkward side-hug. "You'll figure it out, Tony. And if you don't, the beating-up option is always there."

"Are you feeling especially violent today or something?"

"Only around you." She kissed his cheek, and he grimaced and leaned away. Maggie just grinned at him. "Now let's get off the floor, I want you to make me one of those weird green smoothies. That whiskey was definitely meant to be sipped." She hopped to her feet and helped Tony pull himself up.

"Why did you even do that?" he grumbled. "You could have just taken it away."

She shrugged as they left the study. "I was angry, and I wanted to make a point."

"Next time make the point with less expensive alcohol."

 

* * *

 

September 23rd, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

There'd been a buzz of activity around the facility all week, because today was Moving Day. Maggie had spent the last few days with her time split between Tony, Dr Nguyen, Rhodey, Vision, and the gym, as per usual, but today she had a new task.

She'd met the Avengers Facility Personnel Manager, a stern woman named also named Margaret, while on a walk with Rhodey a few days ago. After a brief chat, Maggie found herself volunteering to help out with the Moving Day efforts. She knew a thing or two about handling tech, after all, and after the shakeup with the Accords the Facility was short staffed.

Tony was moody and pensive after the Staten Island Ferry incident, but he'd given her the green light to help out. Ross didn't care about Moving Day and it wasn't like Maggie was leaving the facility. The Manacle was configured to remain within three hundred feet of Margaret the Personnel Manager.

So Maggie spent the day meeting each shipment from the Tower, checking logs and documentation, and then helping get each box where it needed to go. Margaret had given her team a speech about work health and safety and lifting practices that morning, but when Maggie picked up the first box full of heavy disassembled office furniture and hoisted it onto her shoulder without breaking a sweat, Margaret merely raised one eyebrow and nodded for her to proceed.

Throughout the day trucks full of furniture, papers, and office supplies arrived at the facility. None of the trucks contained technology and equipment, however – that was being sent via a secure cargo plane later in the evening. Maggie spent the day carrying boxes and chatting with the moving crew, with a warm feeling in her chest that she identified as satisfaction – it was good to feel useful again. She was no longer the dangerous, politically controversial prisoner who didn't do anything. Now she was the dangerous, politically controversial prisoner who moved boxes. It wasn't much, but seeing the members of the moving crew go from wary and watchful to exchanging jokes with her was worth it.

 

When the sun set Maggie ended up in the Avengers common room with Pepper, having a few drinks while they waited for the cargo plane full of tech to arrive. It was a cloudy night, but from the lounge by the window Maggie could see the occasional glimpse of stars in the dark sky. The facility itself was well lit, the bright lights spilling across the lawns outside.

Pepper was talking about Ross's latest conference, in which he'd promised that the investigation into Maggie's criminal activities was progressing well, but Maggie wasn't really listening. She spent so much time worrying about her future and her place in the world, she wanted to have this day to pretend that she could have some semblance of normal.

So when F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted them an hour later to alert them to a plane crash on Coney Island, she wasn't prepared. Her stomach plummeted as she and Pepper stared at the TV screen, which showed a burning, smoking trail of debris along Coney Island beach. She was so surprised that it wasn't her who put it together. Pepper did.

"Oh my god," Pepper murmured, her eyes widening. "That's  _our_ plane."

Sure enough, the footage swept across the burning chaos on the beach and focused on a warped piece of fuselage, half-buried in the sand, with the Avengers logo emblazoned on the side.

"Holy shit."

 

* * *

 

 

Pepper immediately rushed off to make phone calls and take charge of the situation, so Maggie was left to stew by herself. F.R.I.D.A.Y. politely suggested that she return to her cell, so she made the walk alone, vaguely reflecting that the terms of her imprisonment were getting looser every day. But as always the Manacle was on her wrist should F.R.I.D.A.Y. decide that Maggie was acting out of line, and she couldn't feel  _less_ like escaping.

 

A little after midnight, Tony came into her room. He stank like a bonfire, and there was ash on his face. At Maggie's alarmed look he held up a quelling hand and went to sit on her couch.

"It's all okay," he said, scrubbing a hand across his face. "No one was hurt, and all the tech got recovered. Dum-E was on the plane, but he's like a freaking cockroach, so he's fine. Happy's kicking himself, but with the tech these guys had there's nothing he could have done." There was a pause, and Tony took a deep breath. Maggie, cross-legged on her bed, leaned forward. "Spider-Man stopped the bad guys," he eventually said. "Figured out who they were, snuck up on them while they were stealing the plane, fought them, and even stopped the plane from crashing right on a populated area."

Maggie's eyes widened. Tony looked like he was in shock, his face blank, but the pride in his voice was unmistakeable.

"Are you okay?" she asked, noticing the way his eyes were drooping.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he said distractedly. "Did I screw this up, Maggie? The kid said I wasn't listening to him, and maybe…" he shook his head in frustration. "I don't know."

Maggie got off her bed and went to sit next to him on the couch, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. "You didn't screw this up, Tony," she said. "But seriously, I don't think there's much more you can do tonight. Everyone's safe, Spider-Man saved the day. And you look exhausted. You should get some sleep."

"Hm," he said, tapping his chest. "Alright."

He'd apparently taken her suggestion to sleep as an invitation, because almost as soon as the words of agreement left his lips he pitched sideways, laying his head on the arm of the couch and letting his eyes drift shut.

"No, I didn't mean-" Maggie cut herself off, noting the exhausted lines on Tony's face. "Ugh, fine. But you're getting old, don't blame me if you end up with a bad back." She stood up, and frowned when Tony took that opportunity to swing his legs up where she'd been sitting. She grabbed the blanket from her bed, and when she turned around he had rolled onto his back and his eyes were closed. He was still fully dressed.

"Hopeless," she grumbled, and threw the blanket over him. Muttering under her breath, she grabbed his Louis Vuitton shoes and tugged them off his feet, then tugged the blanket over his legs.

"Go away," Tony mumbled.

"Screw you," she replied. "Sweet dreams."

He didn't reply. Maggie rolled her eyes and tumbled into her bed, her nose full of the smell of smoke, and her thoughts full of her brother. Well, her brother and Spider-Man. She couldn't help but be curious about the masked hero who had single-handedly managed to put a stop to what sounded like a well-orchestrated heist of Avengers tech, and who Tony seemed to care about so much.

She wanted to meet him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorryyyy no Peter and Maggie interactions yet, I know some of y'all were hoping for that! But we're not at the end of Homecoming yet. In the meantime, drop a comment, and don't forget to subscribe and kudos!


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a long one!
> 
> Btw thank you guys for 400 kudos - each and every one of you is amazing, and I'm really glad you enjoy this story!

Over the next few days Tony was busy handling the fallout from the plane crash, but when they spent time together it was obvious to Maggie just how much his mood had changed. He wasn't moody and silent any more, he was  _proud_. They didn't discuss Spider-Man again, but she knew that he was the cause of Tony's newfound good mood. She wanted to tease her brother but she held herself back, because it was good to see him walking around with his usual easy swagger, cracking jokes that weren't at his own expense.

He was back to working on his secret project, too, and he had quite a few closed-door meetings with Pepper.

Two days after the plane crash Tony and Maggie were working on the tech they'd designed for Rhodey's suit, tossing ideas back and forth about how to mass-produce the tech for publicly-available prosthetics. After finishing the armor it had seemed like a natural progression, but today Tony seemed distracted. Eventually he rolled his stool back and said:

"Hey. Do you like it here?"

She blinked. "Yeah, Tony, I do."

"Even though you're technically my prisoner?"

"There's a lot to be said for Stockholm Syndrome," she teased, still working on her design for a prosthetic leg. "Seriously though, yes. I've got friends, I'm well looked after, I've got work to do. You're not too bad either, I suppose." She meant what she said, despite her uncertain future and the deep, aching way she missed Bucky.

Tony tapped his chest. "That's good," he said. "Would you be alright if I… changed the dynamic a bit?"

She raised an eyebrow. "You're referring to all the stuff you've been doing in secret over the past few days."

"Uh, yeah." He looked slightly guilty, but not really.

"What kind of change?"

"I… don't really want to say just yet, we're still planning it out, but… there'd be a new face around."

Maggie rolled her eyes. No wonder Tony had admitted that he was Iron Man the very first chance he got, he was terrible at keeping secrets. He was so obviously referring to Spider-Man, but she decided not to call him out on it. Let him think he was being sneaky. "That sounds good, if you think it'd be a good idea," she replied. He perked up – he'd clearly been worried that she wouldn't want anything to change.

She smirked. "Hey Tony, I think I know what you're talking about."

He froze. "What?"

"All this talk about changing dynamics, a new face… Pepper's pregnant, right?"

Tony threw a bolt at her and she caught it, laughing at the incensed expression on his face.

 

* * *

 

September 26th, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"This is such an obvious distraction, Vis. I know you're keeping me out of the way of whatever's going on downstairs."

Maggie and Vision stood on the Avengers Facility roof, the wind blowing on their faces as they looked out at the spectacular view of the facility and New York in the distance. Vision had invited her up to 'take in the sights,' but Maggie had sensed the buzz of activity as they made their way up the stairs, and she could see the high volume of vehicles in the visitor's parking lot. She paced the rooftop, trying to see whatever was going on, and Vision watched her with a smile.

"You're so not sneaky," she shot at him, and gave up on peering over the edge. Whatever was going on must be inside.

He shrugged. "My chess record against you would beg to differ."

She squinted at him. "Who taught you how to trash talk?" But the words had barely left her mouth before she waved her hand. "Never mind, of course it was Tony."

She and Vision chatted about chess, Wanda, and the aerodynamic capabilities of the Avengers' Quinjet as they hung out on the roof. It clearly wasn't meant to be a place for social gatherings – it was just a plain concrete roof with air conditioning units and generator vents. Though now Maggie was looking she noted that it would be a good place to run flying drills from – it looked out over the whole facility, from the wide-open grounds to the training hangar. The forest stretched for miles around, and when she turned she had to squint against the light glinting off the wide river.

She took a deep breath. It would be beautiful to fly around here. She closed her eyes and imagined skimming the treetops with the wind in her face and her wings spread wide.

She shook herself and paced the roof once more, scuffing her shoes against the concrete. "How much longer do you have to distract me for?" she called to the android on the other end of the rooftop, but he didn't respond. "Ugh."

She strolled to the edge of the roof and leaned against an air conditioning vent, peering down at the people walking in and out of the main building. Most of them wore suits or military uniforms, so her eyes caught on a figure dressed in jeans and a canvas jacket. As she watched, the figure – who she noted was a teenager – practically skipped down the stairs and paused on the tarmac road, gawking around at the grounds. He couldn't seem to decide whether to stare at the facility buildings or at the Quinjet that had just landed.

Maggie smiled to herself and was about to turn away, but then she spotted Happy's distinctive bulky figure hustle out of the main building and make a beeline for the boy. She raised an eyebrow. Happy had a brief conversation with the boy, which she was too far away to hear, then ushered him into a dark car. Happy got in the driver's seat and they drove away.

_Weird._

She was about to mention the odd scene to Vision, but he took that moment to appear soundlessly by her shoulder, making her jump.

"Maggie," he said. He sounded surprised, which caught her attention. "It appears that your brother has just gotten engaged."

She choked and whirled around. " _What_?"

 

* * *

 

After dealing with the pandemonium that was the reporters' response to the press-conference-proposal, Pepper and Tony managed to get a moment alone to laugh hysterically and reaffirm that yes, this is what they wanted. That done, they asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. to invite the Avengers and Maggie to a round of champagne in the common room. Happy had also returned from dropping off the kid, so he made his way up.

Rhodey arrived first, grinning from ear to ear. He pulled them both in for a hug and said "Congratulations, you two. I honestly thought this wouldn't happen until you were both like eighty."

Tony's eyes glinted. "Well we haven't set a date-"

"No," Pepper interrupted firmly, though there was laughter in her eyes. "We are not breaking the world record for longest engagement."

At that moment, the door to the common room opened and Maggie, Happy, and Vision walked in. Vision and Happy looked pleased, but Maggie's face was unreadable. She walked up to the newly-engaged couple, eyes flickering over their faces and darting down to the ring on Pepper's finger. Then she punched Tony in the arm.

" _Ow_ ," he protested, dancing away.

Maggie narrowed her eyes. "Thanks for not telling me, asshole." She then turned to Pepper, beamed at her, and pulled her in for a hug. "Congratulations, I'm so happy for you!"

Pepper hugged her back. "Thank you, Maggie, that means a lot."

Tony shuffled closer, rubbing his arm. "To be fair I couldn't have given you any warning, Magnolia, it was kind of spur of the moment. I didn't plan it out in advance or anything-"

"Romantic," Maggie snorted as she pulled away from Pepper.

"Hey, I'm romantic," he protested. "Aren't I romantic, Pep, I got down on my knee and everything-"

"In front of thirty TV cameras," Rhodey added, smirking.

"It was romantic," Pepper cut in, smiling as she reached out to touch Tony's arm. His face softened as he looked at her, but she wasn't done. "It was especially romantic that you only did it because-"

"Because I love you," Tony cut in, raising his eyebrows at Pepper in some kind of hidden signal. Maggie narrowed her eyes at the exchange, but let it go.

She grinned, looking at her brother and his… his fiancé. Tony looked a little shell-shocked, but you couldn't fake the genuine happiness on his face, and Maggie smiled at him as Vision and Happy moved in to offer their congratulations. Pepper and Tony agreed on a bottle of champagne, and everyone – bar Vision – took a glass and toasted to their happiness.

"Wow, okay," Maggie said, nodding. "You're getting married." The magnitude of it hit her, and she added: "How does that even work?"

Tony shot her a weird look, but then a thought occurred to him and his expression cleared. "Right, you've never been to a wedding before, have you?" Everyone turned to look at her.

"I've seen weddings in movies," she protested. But that just seemed to make everyone look sad, so she pointed at Vision and said "I'm willing to bet that he's never been to one either!"

Vision shrugged, admitting her point.

"We haven't figured out the details yet," Pepper said, thankfully drawing attention away from Maggie's general inexperience with life. "But I guess…" she turned to Tony. "I guess it won't change much, we'll still live here, right?"

He blinked. "Yeah, I mean, if that's what you want?"

"I want that," Pepper agreed. "Though there is going to be a  _lot_ of paperwork. I'm making you sign a prenup."

"That's fair, you  _are_ the CEO of one of the world's leading tech companies."

Maggie, Vision, Rhodey, and Happy watched bemusedly as the couple seemed to figure out that yes, they were actually getting married. They left them to it, and sipped their champagne as F.R.I.D.A.Y. started playing music in the background. Happy and Rhodey talked about all the weddings they'd been to, much to Maggie and Vision's interest, and when Pepper and Tony returned to the conversation they all ribbed the newly engaged couple about the likely speculations the media would have. They watched the video of Tony's proposal, which was strangely sweet despite the crowd of shouting reporters. Maggie watched it with a huge grin on her face.

 

Their impromptu party lasted well into the night, with the Avengers and their family laughing, drinking, and trading jokes. It was a noticeably small party, and the absence of the other Avengers was felt, but for the first time the space wasn't haunted. They missed their absent friends, but in that moment what they had was enough.

Happy got drunk and started waxing nostalgic about the years he'd spent with Pepper and Tony, and professed over and over how happy he was for them. It was sweet, and Pepper actually got a little teary-eyed as he stood up at the end of his slightly slurred speech and toasted them once more. Vision gave a very logical explanation of the statistical likelihood that they would have a happy marriage – 83%, according to various demographic, financial, social, and personality-based factors.

Rhodey ribbed both of them – with Maggie's help – throughout the afternoon and into the night, though it was clear how happy he was about the news. After five glasses of champagne Maggie and Rhodey climbed onto the coffee table and serenaded Tony and Pepper with  _The Wind Beneath My Wings._ Pepper went bright red with laughter, and Tony watched them with a grin that wouldn't have been out of place if Bette Midler herself was singing to him. They finished their performance to a round of applause, and Vision informed them that it had been "objectively terrible".

 

Toward the end of the night Maggie used her well-honed assassin skills to get Tony alone. He was in the kitchen making cups of coffee for the group, looking strangely domestic for a billionaire. He was just on the right side of drunk, chatty and happy, suit crumpled and tie missing, with a look of contentment on his face.

"Hey," Maggie said. "Sorry for punching you before."

He waved a hand expansively. "You'll be hearing from my lawyers in the morning."

She rolled her eyes. "I was surprised. I thought you were going to invite Spider-Man to live at the facility."

"Oh, I did," he said, leaning back against the stone countertop. "But he said he wanted to stay on the ground, help the little guy. Surprising, but he's a great kid. I'm thinking it was the right choice for him, y'know? Still, he'll be coming around more often." He looked up at her. "Wait, I probably shouldn't have told you that, are you interrogating me?"

"Maybe a little bit," she admitted with a smile. He frowned at her, but clearly wasn't too annoyed. She leaned against the counter top beside him as he moved the steaming cups of coffee onto a tray. "I'm  _really_  happy for you, Tony," she said, and his frown faded away. "You and Pepper are great together, this is an awesome step."

He hummed contemplatively, a small smile playing at his lips. "Who would've thunk it, huh?"

"Clearly not you, Mr Spontaneous."

He kicked in the general direction of her ankle, but missed by a few inches. They fell into a comfortable silence, standing together in the common room kitchen as the conversation in the room beyond wound down.

"You're invited to the wedding," Tony eventually said. "That seems obvious, but… just so you know."

Maggie blinked. She hadn't really thought about it, but she suddenly realized that Ross would probably have a few things to say about her taking time off imprisonment to go to a wedding. "Tony, I don't know if-"

He held up a hand. "No. Just… you're invited. End of story."

She cocked her head at him. "Okay."

He grinned at her. "Awesome. You wanna do something at the wedding? Rhodey's my best man, obviously, but you could be a grooms-lady. Or… a ring bearer. No, that's Dum-E's job. Or… hey, you wanna officiate?"

"Okay, you're officially not allowed to make decisions about your wedding while you're drunk," Maggie laughed, and picked up the tray of coffees. "Let's get you back to your fiancé."

"Your future sister-in-law," he reminded her, following her out of the kitchen. "So that's a no on officiating? You could dress up as Elvis!"

"That's a no. To… to all of that. Let's go, idiot."

 

* * *

 

Late September, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

As Happy drove up to the Avengers Facility, Peter couldn't help but stare out the window again – his first visit still felt like a dream, and he couldn't quite believe how  _cool_ the place was. He honestly didn't think he'd be back so soon.

Peter had had a big few weeks. After all the stuff with the Vulture he'd turned down an offer to  _be in the Avengers_. And then Aunt May had walked in on him wearing the Spider-Man suit.

She had freaked out big time, so he had freaked out, and it had ended up with a very frantic conversation and before she drove them both to the Avengers Facility and yelled at Mr Stark. That had been pretty embarrassing, but Mr Stark had actually looked really guilty.

Aunt May was still freaking out, but after explaining why he'd put on his first Spider-Man suit in the first place – Uncle Ben – she started to understand. Peter had stopped going out for a few nights, to keep her from freaking out more, but then the bodega down the street from them got held up and he went out the very next day. May was in his room when he got back, but she didn't freak out at him. She asked him about fifteen separate times whether he'd been hurt, and then she made him eat, shower, and go to bed. It was kind of nice, after all the times he'd snuck back home and been alone with his thoughts.

Anyway, things at the moment were pretty tense for him. Even Ned was being weird, because he just couldn't understand why Peter had turned down a job offer  _to be an Avenger._ Whenever Peter tried to explain, Ned just made a face as if Peter was explaining why the earth was flat.

And  _then_ , after a few nights of fighting crime, Peter realized that though he'd gotten the suit back, he was having issues with it. Mr Stark had reinstated the Baby Monitor Protocol, for one thing, and he kept having issues with functions like the reconnaissance drone or the web fluid combinations. Karen wasn't being very helpful, she just kept saying " _maybe it would have been a good idea to complete the Training Wheels Protocol._ "

He didn't want to hack the suit behind Mr Stark's back again, so he called Happy to ask if he could get the errors looked at. Happy was a  _lot_ nicer after Peter had saved his job, and since it was a weekend he'd agreed to drive Peter up to the Facility right away. May wasn't happy about it, but she made him promise not to agree to any missions or join the Avengers, and then she let him go. She was still super angry with Mr Stark, but even she agreed that the suit kept him a lot safer than the onesie had.

Happy parked the car, and said into seemingly thin air: "F.R.I.D.A.Y., where's Tony right now?"

A female voice with an Irish accent spoke: "The boss is at one of the outdoor tables by the main building."

Peter's eyes went round. "Who is that?"

"That's F.R.I.D.A.Y.," Happy explained as he pulled up beside the main building. "She's Tony's A.I., she runs the facility."

"Like Karen?"

"I don't know who that is. The tables she mentioned are just up those stairs, turn left and follow the building around, you'll see 'em. I've got to park the car, you head on up."

"Wha- by myself?"

Happy looked into the rearview mirror and met his eyes. "You can't walk around a building by yourself?"

"I  _can_ ," he protested, "but aren't I… not allowed to, or something?"

"F.R.I.D.A.Y. will keep an eye on you." Happy sounded exasperated. "Just don't talk to anyone or get lost, and let F.R.I.D.A.Y. know when you're ready to head back. It's the weekend, there's not many people around to see you."

"O-okay." Peter climbed out of the car, clutching his backpack, and stared up at the glass and steel building. Happy drove off, leaving him alone on the pavement. "Okay, don't get lost. I can do this."

Peter followed the directions he'd been given, climbing up the set of stairs. He passed two people in suits, but they didn't look at him twice. Walking around the building felt a little like going out of bounds, because suddenly there was no one else around, but he was pretty sure he wasn't lost yet. As he walked, he stared up at the side of the huge white building, at the forest to his right, and at the green lawns stretching away before him. He'd turned all of this down.

When he turned the corner, he abruptly came to a halt. He'd found the outdoor tables, sure enough; sleek silver benches with a good view of the facility grounds, probably meant for staff to enjoy on their lunch break. Mr Stark was there, too.

But he wasn't alone. Mr Stark, dressed more casually than Peter had ever seen him in track pants and a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt, sat across from a dark-haired woman. The woman sat cross-legged on her bench seat, wearing shorts and a shirt with a picture of a pineapple wearing sunglasses on it. Both she and Mr Stark were drinking green smoothies.

Peter froze by the corner of the building and stared at them.

"Okay, I've got a question," said the woman, after taking a sip of her smoothie. Peter noticed she wore a black metal bracelet with a glowing green light on it. "What's your favorite color?"

Mr Stark scoffed. "Most people don't need to ask that. Just look at the suit."

"Red, then?" Mr Stark nodded, and the woman laughed. "Me too."

Peter couldn't really see her face, because of the angle she was sitting at, but her whole bearing was casual and relaxed, not at all how Peter was used to people behaving around Mr Stark. His eyes flicked to Mr Stark himself, and he was surprised to see him smiling, with genuine emotion on his face.

Peter shifted uncomfortably. He was  _sure_ Mr Stark had just gotten engaged to Ms Potts, the CEO of his company. He didn't know who this lady was, but the longer he stood there without saying something the weirder he felt.

He cleared his throat. "Uh…"

Both Mr Stark and the woman spun to look at him, and the sudden attention made Peter flush. He glanced down at his feet. "Um, Mr Stark, I… Happy told me to come here about the suit, I didn't mean to interrupt your… uh…" he looked up, taking in the incredulous look on Mr Stark's face and the bemused one on the woman's face. They were still seated at the table, holding their smoothies. Peter finished by wincing and adding: "… thing?"

They had been completely still as he rambled, but when he finished the woman laughed, her dark eyes crinkling as she tilted her head at him.

Mr Stark rolled his eyes and put down his smoothie. "Kid, meet my  _sister_  Maggie. Maggie, meet the kid."

Automatically, he said "Nice to meet you, I'm Peter." But then the actual content of Mr Stark's introduction hit him, and his eyes shot wide open. He hadn't recognized her at all – he'd never actually seen her face before except in the publicly-released mugshot, and she didn't look much like that anymore. Her bruises were gone, she wore normal clothes, and her face was alive with amusement. Besides, Peter really hadn't expected to see  _the Wyvern_ at a picnic bench drinking smoothies.

All of this hit him in a rush, and before he could stop himself he blurted out "Oh  _shit_ , you're the lady from the airport!"

That got her attention – she still looked amused, but now her eyes flicked over him, sizing him up. She cocked her head. "You're the one in the spider suit."

 _Crap. Crap. Crap._ "Uh,  _no_ , uh, what spider suit? I wasn't at the airport." He instinctively angled himself so she couldn't see his backpack, which he'd stuffed said spider suit into only an hour ago.

Mr Stark rolled his eyes again. "Peter, don't tell anyone about Maggie. Maggie, don't tell anyone about Peter. He's got this… secret identity. Thing. I don't want to talk about it, it gives me hives."

Peter sighed and cautiously walked over to them, his shoulders sagging. He really wasn't any good at keeping the whole Spider-Man thing a secret, was he?

The woman –  _Maggie_ – sensed his dejection. "I won't tell anyone, Peter," she said, her eyes warm. "I don't really  _have_ anyone to tell."

"Thanks," he muttered, now standing at the end of their table. "It's just, I'm in high school, and I've got my aunt, and the bad guys really can't know who I am."

"Fair enough," she agreed. Now that he was standing next to her Peter could see that she looked a bit like Mr Stark. Suddenly a frown pinched her brow. "High school?" She turned to glare at Mr Stark, who raised his hands defensively.

"He was already fighting crime, I just gave him a better suit."

"And sent him up against half the Avengers," she shot back.

"Hey, you've got no moral high ground here, you're the one who beat him up."

"I wouldn't say she beat me up," Peter cut in.

They stopped bickering and looked up at him again, shooting him identical looks of bemusement.

"That's true," Maggie conceded, "I did run away."

Peter recalled the way the Wyvern had dived after him at the airport, looking terrifying with her big, sharp wings and glowing red eyes. He could hardly believe that this was the same woman. "Yeah, and you threw a grenade at me."

Now Mr Stark turned to glare at Maggie, and she shrugged. "I knew it wasn't going to hit him."

"You did?" Peter perked up. "Thanks, I guess." He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet awkwardly. "Are you, um… okay?"

She cocked her head. "Am I okay?"

He gestured vaguely at her, and then winced. "I just mean after… after everything that went down at the airport in Germany. I heard you got hurt."

Her face softened. Out of the corner of his eye Peter saw Mr Stark watching them with a considering look. "Oh. Yeah, I… I did get hurt, but I'm okay now," she smiled at him. "Benefits of super-soldier serum. Thanks for asking."

"Wait, you're a super-soldier?" he asked, eyes widening again.

"Yes she is," Mr Stark cut in as he got to his feet, "but don't tell anyone that either. You said you came here about the suit?"

"Right," he nodded. "I guess since I hacked it and all some functions aren't working? I was hoping you could help me fix it."

Maggie laughed. "You hacked the suit he made for you?"

Peter flushed. "Uh, yeah. Well, my friend did."

Mr Stark rolled his eyes again. "Alright, kid, let's get the suit to the workshop. Maggot, you coming?"

"Yeah." Maggie, who didn't seem at all offended by the nickname, got to her feet and picked up her smoothie.

"Oh, we're all going up? Now? Together?" Peter asked as the Stark siblings strode toward the main building. Mr Stark looked over his shoulder at him.

"Yeah, kid, get a move on."

"Okay…" Hardly believing that he was in the presence of not one but  _two_ Starks, Peter grabbed his backpack straps and hurried after them.

 

* * *

 

Peter didn't say much on the way to the workshop, so Maggie took the opportunity to surreptitiously observe him. He was a lot younger than she'd expected, all wide-eyed amazement and nerves as he stared at the facility corridors and rooms. He was wearing faded jeans, converse, and a flannel shirt over a plain grey t-shirt. His body language was unconsciously protective of his backpack, so she figured that's where the suit was.

No wonder Tony had been so worried about mentoring and kids over the past few weeks. Peter  _was_ a kid. And yet, as she watched him a little more closely, she sensed there was an invisible weight on his shoulders that normal kids didn't have. He'd taken on a lot for such a young person.

When they entered the workshop, Peter's mouth dropped open. Tony liked showing off, so Maggie hung back and watched the two of them talk as Tony showed Peter the workshop. Peter had forgotten all his nerves – he couldn't seem to stop talking as he stared at the machines and projects lying around the room. Tony's eyes glinted with amusement as the teenager spun in place, eyes wide and mouth open. Maggie wondered if that's what she looked like her first time in the workshop.

Peter's attention caught on a mechanical trill from the other side of the workshop. "What is  _that_?"

" _He_ is Dum-E," Maggie piped up, striding over to the pair of robots near Tony's workbench. "And this is U. The robots swiveled their claws as Peter approached, his eyes wide. "Dum-E, U, this is Peter."

The robots opened and closed their claws in greeting, and Peter laughed slightly hysterically. "Okay, there's robots now, that's… that's cool."

She grinned at him. "Yeah, it is."

Tony hopped on a stool and rolled toward the bench. "Alright, spiderling, let's have a look at the suit."

Peter pulled the suit out of his backpack and they got to work. Peter stared at the revolving holographic overlays as he explained what the problem was, and Tony listened while playing with a wrench. Maggie took the opportunity to blatantly snoop through the suit's subsystems, seeing what Tony had equipped Spider-Man with.

Eventually, Tony explained that there wasn't anything wrong with the suit, it was just that Peter didn't have access to certain functions yet.

The teenager frowned. "But Mr Stark, I don't need the Training Wheels Protocol! I fought the Vulture, I beat him, haven't I… haven't I proved that I can handle myself?"

Tony sighed and put down the wrench. "Look, kid, it's not about proving yourself – it's about sending you out into the field with a suit you don't know how to use. Let's not forget that you beat the Vulture in  _pajamas._ I'm impressed, really, but there's a difference between heart and grit or whatever helped you win then, and handling a highly complex mechanical suit. The Training Wheels Protocol is just that – to  _train_ you. Otherwise you could end up hurting yourself, or other people."

Peter threw up his hands. "How am I mean to know how to use it if I'm not  _allowed_ to use it? What if I need to use one of those functions to help someone, but I can't because I've been locked out?"

Maggie watched the two of them with a smile playing at her lips. She'd only just met Peter but she liked him, and liked the exasperated, proud, protective side of Tony he brought out. After another minute of back and forth, she cut in.

"He's got a point, Tony." They both turned to look at her – Peter in surprise, Tony in annoyance. She raised an eyebrow. "Can you really tell me you gave yourself a  _Training Wheels Protocol_ before you took the Iron Man armor out the first time?"

Tony opened his mouth and then closed it, looking guilty. Then he rallied himself: "Okay, but I wasn't  _twelve-_ "

"Fifteen!" Peter protested at the same time as Maggie said:

"Yes, you were a very responsible, mature adult who made good decisions," she interrupted, both eyebrows raised. Tony's face twisted. She gestured at Peter, who watched them with an open mouth. "Peter's shown that he's capable. And let's not forget that he's not the only person in this room who went into battle as a teenager."

Tony sighed. "Okay, but my original point stands – he doesn't know about the suit's subsystems."

"So show me," Peter piped up, closing his mouth and straightening his shoulders. "I can handle it."

Tony looked at Peter for a few long, silent seconds, glanced at Maggie's face, and then back at Peter. He sighed. "Fine. Okay. If you pay attention today and prove to me that you can handle this suit's functions, I'll take off the locks."

Peter nodded emphatically. "Yes, I can do that, Mr Stark, thank you!"

Tony sighed again. "Whatever. Your aunt might actually kill me if you get hurt doing something stupid in the suit."

 

They spent the rest of the day going through the functions of the spider suit in detail. They relocated to the demonstration bay a few doors down from the workshop: a reinforced, mostly empty concrete room that could withstand low-to-middle range explosions and most kinds of artillery.

Peter put on the suit and tried out each button and voice command when Tony instructed him to, as Tony explained what each function did and why he'd chosen to install it. Maggie, who had brought a swivel chair into the demonstration bay with her, was learning as they went, just like Peter. She piped up every now and then with ideas about alternative ways he could use each function, and advice about what to do in different kinds of combat situations. Whenever they discussed anything to do with projectiles, she assisted by pelting Peter with pencils, metal bolts, and grapes – whatever was closest to hand.

Mostly, however, she browsed through the holographic readouts for the suit and chatted with the young superhero.

"Hey, Peter," she said, as Tony demonstrated how to navigate the suit's complex HUD. Peter, his mask shoved up to his forehead, turned around.

"Yeah?"

"Tony told me about how you stopped those guys from stealing the Moving Day plane last week. I wanted to say thank you. You did a good job." She smiled at him, and his eyebrows shot up.

"I, yeah… I mean, no problem!" he said, eyes wide. "Thank you, Ms Stark-"

"Maggie," she suggested.

"Maggie, right. I, uh, I was pretty glad when the bad guy turned out not to be you - I thought, that first time at the lake-"

She held up a hand. "I'm sorry, what?"

Peter frowned. "The Vulture. He had big metal wings, like yours?

There was a beat of silence. Then Maggie turned to Tony. "What the hell?"

Tony, who had been very pointedly not looking at her, winced. "I didn't tell you about the Vulture? Huh, weird."

" _Tony-_ "

"I thought it would upset you! A guy flying around with metal wings, doing bad-guy-stuff-"

Maggie rolled her eyes. "I'm  _fine_. F.R.I.D.A.Y., can I see the Vulture, please?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. obliged, replacing the holographic overlay of Peter's suit with an image of the Vulture. At first she was struck with an odd sense of déjà vu – the Vulture wore a dark outfit, his face concealed by a mask and glowing goggles, as he was held aloft by two menacing metal wings. But the differences quickly jumped out at her – his wings were a different design to hers, more bird-like than bat-like, with two enormous turbines. His whole design was heavier, clunkier, than the Wyvern's sleek, efficient wings and uniform. The Vulture also held a glowing purple weapon.

"Huh," she said after studying the image, along with the short blurb F.R.I.D.A.Y. had thoughtfully included about the Vulture himself and the man who'd designed the wings. She turned to Peter, who glanced between Maggie and Tony as if expecting to get in trouble. "How did you take him down?"

Peter blinked. "Um."

She gestured at the Vulture. "I know a thing or two about how wings give you the advantage in combat. How'd you get him?"

"Oh, I…" Peter flushed. "I didn't, really. I was more focused on stopping him from stealing the plane, and once we were down he, uh… kind of beat me up. A bit. But then he tried to steal a bunch of Mr Stark's arc reactors, which blew up, so I just kind of… dragged him out of the fire, um, and tied him up."

Maggie and Tony stared at Peter for a few moments. Peter just flushed further, and scratched the back of his neck.

"Well." Maggie cocked her head. "Well done."

Peter ducked his head. "Didn't do much."

"Sounds like you saved the plane and the Vulture's life, if you ask me," she said. "And… for reference, if you ever end up fighting someone with metal wings again – go for the power sources. Engines, turbines. Wings are really difficult to design, and once you mess with those crucial parts they're basically useless. Also, if you're up against anyone using metal to protect themselves, go for joints and hinges, and remember that metal doesn't do too well in the cold."

"Oh," Peter replied, his eyes round. "Okay."

Tony eyed Maggie, and she shrugged at him. "Just saying."

"Whatever, weirdo," Tony said, and went back to explaining the suit's various reconnaissance mode subsystems.

After watching them talk for a few more minutes, Maggie couldn't help piping up again. "So you're in high school? What's that like?"

Peter, using the reconnaissance mode to observe a squad of Avengers agents on the lawn through the reinforced window, cocked his head. "What is high school like?"

"Yeah. I never went, I'm curious."

He switched out of reconnaissance mode and turned around. "Oh. Uh… school's alright, I guess. I do best in science, but I'm getting pretty good at Spanish, and I'm on the decathlon team with my friends."

"You're in science classes? What are you working on at the moment?"

Peter seemed a little surprised by her interest in his life, but he didn't seem to mind chatting with her. Maggie didn't know if she'd ever really spoken with a teenager before, save for while she was at the Red Room, but it was fascinating. He was full of pop culture references and funny observations, and he had a genuine interest in the suit's capabilities. He obviously looked up to Tony, and though he seemed a little overwhelmed once he realized that Maggie was just as smart as her brother, he relaxed as the day went on.

In the afternoon Peter ended up hanging upside down from the demonstration bay ceiling, nodding along as Tony gave him various warnings about what  _not_ to try in the suit. Maggie watched with her chin propped on her hand and her feet tucked up under herself. It was interesting seeing Tony like this – protective and concerned, lecturing the kid about not taking unnecessary risks. Tony eventually noticed that she was staring, and glanced over at her.

"What?"

She smiled. "Nothing."

Tony had always been good at making his own family.

 

* * *

 

As they neared the bottom of the list of subsystems they moved back into the workshop, since the demonstration bay was covered in webbing and projectiles.

Maggie reclined in her chair and started juggling tools, watching metal flash through in the air as her hands made the familiar movements. Tony took one look at her and muttered "of course you can juggle." Peter stared at her, the white eyes of his mask wide.

"You can juggle?" he asked, voice high.

"No," she replied, still juggling. "I'm just very good at tricking people into thinking I can."

Tony snorted.

"Can you juggle anything?" Peter asked, undeterred.

"As long as it's about palm size," she replied. "Oh, and I can solve Rubik's cubes while juggling them."

Tony slapped the workbench. "That's  _gotta_ be a lie," he said, spider-suit subsystems forgotten. At Maggie's unimpressed look, his eyes widened. "Really?"

She cocked an eyebrow. "Do you have three Rubik's cubes?"

 

Maggie had not started the day intending to perform her  _Fuck You, HYDRA_ skill for her brother and his protégé Spider-Man, but that's what she ended up doing. Peter had pulled off his mask, and he watched the cubes get closer to being solved with a childlike amazement. Tony wasn't much better, his eyebrows high on his forehead and his eyes wide. When she finished and presented the solved cubes with a flourish, Peter burst into applause with a huge grin on his face, and Tony stared at the Rubik's cubes.

"How do you know how to do that?" he asked, gesturing from her to the cubes. " _Why_ do you know how to do that?"

She shrugged and set the Rubik's cubes on the workbench. Peter immediately swiped one of them, messed it up, and started trying to solve it.

"Because it's something that HYDRA would have hated me knowing," she explained.

A shadow crossed Tony's face. "Huh. That something you do often, learning stuff because HYDRA wouldn't like it?"

She smiled. "No. Nowadays I only do what I want to do, because I want to do it."

His eyes softened. At that moment, however, Peter's cellphone vibrated on the workbench. He jumped and checked it, then swore under his breath. "Uh, I've gotta head home now," he said, glancing up at Tony. "Am I… did I pass?"

Tony's eyes narrowed. "If I say no, you're just going to hack the suit and get rid of the Training Wheels Protocol anyway, aren't you?"

"Probably," Peter admitted, meeting his mentor's eyes. Maggie smothered her laugh with a cough.

Tony sighed. "Well for what it's worth, if you remember everything I said and make sure to come back when things in the suit need restocking – like  _parachutes_ , Parker – then yes, theoretically, you should be fine. You pass."

"Yes!" Peter said, pumping one fist in the air.

"Alright," Tony said, moving back to the workbench. "I'll just unlock all the subsystems-"

"Don't worry about it," Maggie interrupted. "I already did it." She flicked up a holo-screen, showing a wall of code with green letters superimposed over it:  _Training Wheels Protocol Deactivated._

Tony scowled. "When did you do that?"

"About three hours ago."

He opened his mouth, looking as if he was about to start lecturing  _her_ , but Peter was already slipping out of the suit and shoving it back in his bag.

"Thank you so much Mr Stark and, uh… Ms-"

"Maggie," she reminded him.

"Right, Maggie, thank you both! I've really gotta head back though, May's getting worried. F.R.I.D.A.Y., can you ask Happy to take me home?"

"Mr Hogun has already brought the car around, Mr Parker."

"Great," Peter shrugged on his backpack, then looked at the Rubik's cube he'd left on the workbench. "Um, Ms St- Maggie, can I borrow that?"

"Go for it, Spider-Man," she grinned. "It was nice to meet you."

He blinked. "It was nice to meet you too."

Tony rolled his eyes. "I'll walk you out, kid."

Maggie cleared her throat, drawing Tony's attention, and waved the Manacle at him. Peter looked confused, but Tony just frowned.

"Right," he said. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., please reconfigure the Manacle to remain inside the workshop until I get back." That done, Tony put a hand on Peter's shoulder and steered him out. "Come on, kid."

"Later, Peter!" Maggie called, hopping up on the workbench. Peter waved back at her, beaming, and just before the workshop doors closed she heard him ask Tony:

"What does the Manacle do?"

Once she was alone in the workshop, Maggie grinned to herself and clapped her hands together. She'd never really imagined that her brother would have a  _protégé,_ but seeing Tony and Peter together had just made a kind of sense. The kid was eager, excitable, but strongly principled at the same time – he was young, but he knew what he was doing. Maggie wondered, if she'd had a semi-normal upbringing, would she have been so mature at fifteen?

She shrugged to herself, and watched Dum-E inspect the remaining Rubik's cubes. Peter might have chosen not to be an Avenger just yet, but he was definitely connected to Iron Man. And after spending time with them together, Maggie knew that that would be good for both of them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some of you might feel like I skimmed over the Aunt-May-finding-out-about-Spider-Man reveal. I had a LOT of ideas for how she might react and how I could write about it, but at the end of the day I realized that this isn't a story about that. Also, I'm sure the second Spider-Man movie is going to get into that a lot more, so I've kept it simple here.
> 
> And lastly. RIP Stan Lee - a legend and a hero.


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left wonderful comments, especially those angels who leave a comment every chapter - you make my life awesome!

 

October 4th, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

One morning, Maggie lay on the couch in her room, her chin on her chest as she scrolled through global news on her Stark Tablet. She had her headphones in, listening to her iPod. It was a bright day outside, and from time to time she looked up from the tablet to admire the fall colors in the forest.

As she scrolled absently through headlines about politics, economics, and human interest stories, one word jumped out at her:  _HYDRA._

She hit the article without really thinking about it, so she didn't register the full headline until the page loaded:  _"Our Mom Was On A HYDRA Kill List_ ". Maggie's heartbeat picked up, and she sat up properly. It turned out it wasn't actually an article, but a link to a clip of a news program.

It began with a newsreader at her desk in a studio, eyeing the camera grimly. " _Six years ago, the family of Chicago mother of two Karina Weston woke up to a knock on the door._ " A photo of the woman appeared beside the newsreader, and Maggie frantically scanned her face – she didn't recognize her, but that might not mean much. She looked nice, with warm green eyes and a frizz of dark hair. The newsreader continued: " _Mr Weston opened the door to a police officer, who had the unfortunate duty of informing them that Mrs Weston had been killed in a traffic accident earlier that morning. For years, her family grieved for her. But after the fall of the government agency S.H.I.E.L.D. in January 2014, they found out that her death was no accident._ "

Maggie felt her stomach sinking with every word. The clip changed to footage of the dead woman's family: two adult children – a brother and a sister – who had her green eyes, and their balding, sad-eyed father.

" _I'm an International Relations major,_ " explained the sister, " _so I was going through some webpages about the information dump for a research project when I saw mom's name on a list. I couldn't believe it, I had to read it about three more times before I realized what I was seeing. I googled the other names on the list, and they'd all died in other 'accidents' around about the same time mom did._ "

Maggie clutched the tablet in a white-knuckled grip as she watched the rest of the story. The family explained how they'd gotten in contact with the families of the other people on the list, but they couldn't find a connection between their loved ones other than that most of them lived in the same geographical area. After two years of research, and asking law enforcement for answers, they still didn't know why their mother had been targeted or who killed her. They did manage to get an autopsy, however, and found that Karina Weston had actually been shot – a detail that never made it into the initial police and autopsy reports. The other victims had also been shot. The family described their frustration with law enforcement and the government, who were slow to give out information on HYDRA and its victims.

Toward the end, Karina Weston's son said " _And the government has had access to some of HYDRA's most infamous assassins – the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier – at one point or another, but there's been no information released about what they've done. They could have killed mom, and even though one of them's in government custody right now we might never know._ " A minute later the video ended, with the newsreader grimly telling the audience " _This program has reached out to the State Department, the Joint Terrorist Task Force, the FBI, the Avengers, and the Sokovia Accords Committee for comment, but we are yet to receive a reply._ "

The minute the video ended, Maggie let out a gusting breath and got to work. She researched Karina Weston's case, looking through the list with her name on it in the HYDRA information dump, and working out exact dates and locations. After another five minutes of frantic research she realized that she'd been in Germany at the time of Mrs Weston's murder. She closed her eyes and let out a breath, fingers shaking.

"Are you alright, Ms Stark?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. asked, no doubt picking up on Maggie's physical reaction to the video.

"I'm..." she took a breath. "I'm not alright, F.R.I.D.A.Y. I need your help with something."

"As you wish."

The Wyvern might not have killed Karina Weston, but the video still chilled Maggie to her core. There were people in the world  _right now_ wondering if she had killed their loved ones. Some of them were probably right.

With F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help, Maggie went digging. She found that there were people all over the world who'd looked through the information dump and found that HYDRA had had some impact on their lives; whether it was a dead loved one, a disabling injury, a job loss, a bankrupted company, or a war started in their home country. HYDRA's crimes ranged from great to small, the world over. Maggie found an article from 2014 titled  _HYDRA Could Have Changed Your Life, And You Wouldn't Know It._

There was a global conversation happening about the impacts of HYDRA's manipulation and violence, that had started in 2014 and still continued today. The discourse was categorized by confusion, and frustration – confusion because despite the information dump, there were so many unanswered questions, and frustration because governments and agencies the world over maintained secrecy about what they knew.

And Maggie started to recognize faces. Some of them she remembered surveilling, working in the shadows of their life for HYDRA's ends. Some of them, she killed.

On the list of people that Karina Weston had been on, Maggie recognized a name.  _Ahmed Khouri._ She'd killed him in 2010, a clean shot to the head after landing on the bonnet of his moving car. Maggie froze at the sudden recall and then closed her eyes, forcing herself to live in the memory.

A headache bloomed behind her eyes, and she winced at the ghost-sensation of the Memory Suppression Chair's sparking plates, but she forced herself to search for a reason for Khouri's death. After twenty minutes of gritting her teeth at the pain she had to admit she didn't have an answer. No one had explained why that man had to die. They'd just told her to kill him, and she had.

But that wasn't good enough. She opened her eyes and flexed her fingers. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., you're about to help me do something illegal."

"Ms Stark, I will remind you that I am not–"

"Nope, I think your creator would agree with me on this one. I need you to help me hack into some government agencies."

 

It took them two hours to find a connection between the people on the kill list. That was an unthinkably long time for a skilled electronic tracker and an A.I., but a laughably short time compared to the years that the families of the people on that list had been searching for an answer.

"Damn it," Maggie said, once they had their answer. Those people hadn't died because they were secretly employed by S.H.I.E.L.D., or some other intelligence agency. They hadn't died because they'd sold out to HYDRA and then betrayed them. They'd died because they'd been present in a café one rainy day in Chicago, where two HYDRA generals met and had a verbal argument. The generals weren't sure if anyone had overheard them, but that had been enough for HYDRA to decide that the potential witnesses needed to die.

Maggie squeezed her eyes shut. " _Damn it._ "

She felt sick. Not just because of her role in such a needless tragedy – she'd been aware of her crimes for a long time now. But she hadn't known that there were people out there like the Westons, desperately searching for information and getting stonewalled at every turn.

And Maggie  _had_ a lot of the information they needed. The government had it by now as well, or they had the capability to find out, but as far as Maggie could see, for whatever reason they weren't doing anything about it. Her stomach lurched as she realized that it could be possible that they just didn't have the resources to deal with the mess HYDRA had left: hundreds of victims all over the world, all at once.

"Ms Stark," F.R.I.D.A.Y. cut in, "Secretary Ross has just arrived at the facility with investigators from the Pentagon."

"Oh, god." Maggie buried her face in her hands and groaned. She felt heavy after her morning of research, every inch of her dragging down toward the floor. Her stomach churned, and her every nerve felt shredded. She wanted to sleep for years, or scream, or just… sit and wallow in her thoughts.

"Shall I tell them you're not well enough to be interviewed?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. asked diplomatically.

Maggie peeled her hands away from her face and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't think they'd care."

"I think you might be right there, Ms Stark."

She groaned again and got to her feet, feeling as if she was standing up with the weight of each innocent victim on her shoulders. Her knees shook. She straightened her shoulders and composed her face, waiting for her cell door to slide open.

 

* * *

 

The interview was – predictably – exhausting, harrowing, and brought up dozens of traumatic memories. Maggie kept herself sane by running calculations for myoelectric prostheses in her head, but then the investigators would ask a clarifying question and she'd be right back in the memories of blood and screams, drowning in them.

As the interview started to wrap up, Maggie folded her hands in her lap and looked each one of the investigators in the eye. There were three of them, two women and a man, in nearly identical suits. They were more efficient than other investigators she'd met with, but she wasn't sure if efficiency was what she really wanted.

"Is there something else you'd like to say, Ms Stark?" said the man asked, noticing the uncertainty in her face.

She nodded, pursing her lips and looking down at her hands as she composed her thoughts. "All this information I've just given you…" she said, then looked up at them. "Are you going to release it to the public?"

The woman on the left spoke up. "Are you concerned about what details of your confession will become public? Do you want a lawyer?"

Maggie fought back a scowl. "No, this isn't about… I'm just wondering what you plan to do with the information."

The woman shared a glance with her colleagues, then met Maggie's eye again. "I don't foresee this information becoming public anytime soon, no."

Maggie frowned. "Then why bother asking me questions at all? The things I did impacted real people's lives, don't they deserve to know about it?"

The woman on the right raised an eyebrow. "This isn't a matter of individuals, Ms Stark, this is a matter of determining HYDRA's scope of influence throughout our government and its branches, and maintaining national security."

Maggie sat back in her seat, face blank. "Oh." She wanted to argue the point, but she could see from the determined faces of the investigators before her that she wouldn't have any chance of swaying them. They were just doing their jobs, after all. She knew that, but she couldn't help the way her body went cold at their talk of organisations, instead of people. They sounded chillingly like HYDRA.

"Do you have any other questions?" asked the man drily.

She shook her head.

"Then we're done here," he said. "Thank you for your cooperation, we may come back for a follow-up interview." The three of them got to their feet and left the meeting room without giving her a second glance.

She put her head in her hands. "What are you doing, Maggie," she sighed. She'd thought she was finally doing good by cooperating with the endless rotation of investigators, but now she wasn't so sure. They'd made their priorities very clear.

After a long moment of battling with all that she'd done, and wondering what she ought to do from here, she gathered up enough strength to stand and head for the door. Only to stop at the sound of raised voices in the hallway outside. She hesitated in the doorway.

"- if they're not hurting anyone or using their enhancements to fight crime, then we shouldn't have to go looking for them," the first voice argued, and Maggie's eyebrows shot up when she realized it was Tony. "People deserve to be left in peace."

"That's not an option anymore," came a growl.  _Secretary Ross_. "There are people out there capable of leveling  _cities_ , we don't have the luxury of letting them sit around as they wait to work up the balls to actually do it. I'm not here to debate ethics with you, I'm here to requisition a worldwide identification and tracking system for enhanced individuals. You'll have a generous budget and resources – scanners, satellites, medical records, whatever you need just ask for it."

Maggie's stomach lurched so hard that she had to press her hand to her abdomen.

"Ross, you've gotta admit this sounds just like what S.H.I.E.L.D. was doing with Project Insight: identifying targets before they became a threat. Cap saw that for what it was, a threat to all humanity,  _extremely_ capable of being misused, and he shut it down."

"And look where his relaxed attitude toward defying government agencies ended up-"

"I'm sorry, are you saying he should have let HYDRA murder us all?"

"I said I'm not here for a debate, Stark. I need this done, and you're the technology developer for the Avengers, and hence the Accords Committee. Do your job."

"Look," Tony replied, his tone lower. "I agree with the Accords, and I signed them. But they didn't say anything about me developing tech on demand, so I'm going to have to pass on this. Thanks but no thanks."

Maggie let out a silent breath, nodding unconsciously. There was a dangerous pause.

When Ross spoke again, his voice was low and deceptively reasonable. "Stark, I've played ball with you. I've let you run the Avengers basically the way you used to. I've given you freedom about which missions you choose, and backed you up when the team heads into foreign countries. Hell, I've let you keep your sister under the loosest definition of imprisonment, and let you seek private psychiatric evaluation for her. I even overlooked that little outing to Manhattan – yes, I know about that. But if you stop supporting the Accords Committee, then I've got no reason to be so generous."

Maggie's eyes shot open, but she was frozen in place, stuck listening to Ross's words past the heartbeat pounding in her ears.

There was another pause before Tony spoke. "You've been vague about it in the past, Mr Secretary, but why don't we be completely clear now – you're threatening my sister so I'll make this tech for you?" His voice was light in his usual casual manner, but Maggie could hear the hard bite of iron in his words.

Ross sounded dismissive: "We both know she deserves a lot worse than what she's currently getting-"

"She was controlled, Ross!" Tony said heatedly. "She didn't want to kill anyone-"

"Brainwashing's a hard sell in court, I'm afraid," Ross said. "Look, right now she's fine where she is – I know she hasn't got a shot of escaping, and we're getting the information we need from her. But there are people in the government, in law enforcement, and in the public who think she deserves serious consequences for her crimes. Right now I'm protecting her from that." Maggie heard a muffled clap, and realized that Ross must have just put his hand on Tony's shoulder. She bristled, but she was still frozen in place. "But I'm not doing it out of the goodness of my heart, Stark. I need that tech."

There was another pause. Tony's next words were soft, almost a whisper: "So you are threatening her."

"Call it what you want," Ross replied. "I've got to head back to Washington, call me when you make up your mind about the tracking system. Maybe I'll put you on hold."

Something about the menacing dismissiveness in his voice sent heat flooding through Maggie's limbs, and she stormed out of the doorway, her face twisted with rage. But Ross was already gone. Tony stood by himself at the end of the wide corridor, eyes hidden behind his orange glasses as he stared down at the floor. His shoulders heaved as if he'd just run a race, but his face was etched with lines of exhaustion.

Maggie's rage swirled and ebbed at the hopelessness in his expression, but it didn't go away.

"He can't make you do that," she said, and Tony's head jerked up. He spotted her standing just outside the doorway, and sighed.

"Maggie. You shouldn't have heard that-"

"No," she interrupted, her hands balling into fists as she strode down the corridor toward him. "I don't care what happens to me, you can't let him force you to do  _anything_ you don't want to." She took a sharp breath and realized that angry tears were prickling her eyes.

Tony just shrugged helplessly. "There's not a lot I can do."

"Tell him  _no_ ," she urged, now a few feet away.

"I can't let you go back to the Raft," he said, gesturing at her. "I've thought about this over and over. I even thought about letting you escape, hiding you with Steve, wherever he is. But they'd find you, one day, and the punishment would be worse. I'd get blamed too, and the Avengers – and Peter – need me where I am." He reached up and pinched his nose. "I can't do much to protect you, Maggie, but I'll do what I can."

She shook her head. "This isn't  _right_."

"No shit!" he said, hands flying apart as if to encompass the whole situation. He gave her a pointed look. "What do you want me to do, Maggie?"

"Don't let him manipulate you! Don't worry about me, I'll be-"

"That's not an option," he shot back, glaring at her. But then he sighed, and his anger melted away. "Look, I've… I've had this debate a hundred times with myself, it never goes anywhere. Don't ask me to abandon you, because I can't do it." He shrugged, and shot her a  _what can you do_  look. "I just can't. So trust me to do what I have to, Maggie, please."

And suddenly he went blurry, because Maggie was really crying now, tears clouding her vision and spilling down her cheeks. She swiped at her eyes, but the tears didn't stop. Tony sighed and came over to wrap her in his arms.

_How did I get so lucky, to be so loved?_

She hiccuped. "All those people…"

"I know," he said grimly, rubbing her back. "I know. I'll try to find a way to get around it. Don't worry about it."

"Don't tell me what to do," she mumbled into his shoulder, and he chuckled, but his heart wasn't in it.

There wasn't much else they could say. Maggie couldn't quite seem to stop crying, as irritating as it was, because she felt completely overwhelmed by her morning of horrific research, followed by the disheartening interview and the knowledge that she really was her brother's greatest weakness.

They ended up walking to the common room together, and by the time they got there Maggie had managed to get control over her tear ducts. Vision sat on one of the couches, his face grim – he must have tapped into the security feeds.

Tony had an arm around Maggie's shoulders, and he squeezed her into his side. "I've got to make some calls, Martingale, will you be alright here with Vision?"

She nodded, then frowned. "Did you really just nickname me after a probability theory?"

"Probably," he replied with a quick grin, then squeezed her once more before letting go and leaving the room.

Maggie sighed, and turned to Vision. "I don't care what we do, Vis, but I need to do  _something_."

 

They ended up playing chess. Maggie felt too emotionally drained to do something active, and Vision was still teaching her to play. She'd gotten a lot better, but playing against Vision was quite literally like trying to beat a computer, and she was yet to win a game. Normally she was hyper-focused, thinking tens of moves ahead in an effort to beat him, but her heart wasn't in it today. Still, it was nice to be doing something with her mind and her hands.

After her third loss, Maggie sighed and dropped her face into her hands.

Vision eyed her for a moment, his eyes concerned, and said: "I think I will… make you some hot chocolate."

"Thank you," she mumbled through her fingers.

He retreated to the kitchen, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Maggie didn't like the darkness, so she pulled her hands away from her face and stared blankly at the chessboard. Her brain could handle a lot, but the influx of information and emotion from today was overwhelming – the hundreds of heartbroken, frustrated people just searching for answers, the people who'd died for visiting a coffee shop at the wrong time, the hard-faced investigators who'd said  _this isn't a matter of individuals_ , Ross's menacing manipulations and Tony's defeated shrug.

Maggie didn't know what was right, here. Like the investigators had said, this wasn't just a matter of the people she met and spoke to – this was a situation that stretched across countries, governments, hundreds and thousands and millions of people. She was imprisoned in a facility that literally dealt with the fate of the world. Her brother shaped generations, and Ross and the Accords made decisions about the population of the world and how they were to be protected.

It was too much to comprehend. She didn't know how the others did it. Her eyes tracked over the chessboard, the dark and light intermeshed squares, but she wasn't really seeing it.

 _It's all politics_. She frowned at the thought, then realized it was something Pepper said a lot when it came to the Accords and Ross's manipulations. She'd said it just last week, after another of Ross's press conferences when he'd said "we're still gathering information".

 _It's all politics._ Maggie had never been political. She'd never had enough choices to be political. HYDRA had had their schemes, and she'd been the weapon they used to carry them out.

She ran her eye over the chessboard, thinking of how Pepper had explained it.  _Politics is just game, for most people. It's a game they play every day._

Maggie's eyes focused on the game in front of her. If the politics of her situation were a game, it was a  _complicated_ chess game, where there weren't defined sides and no one knew what the rules were or when they were winning.

Sighing at the fact that she was resorting to board games to try to make sense of the vast world around her, Maggie reached out and picked up her felled King. Tony was the King here, she was sure of that – without him there was no Avengers, no family, no nothing. But he was limited. The King was the most important piece on the board, but he could only move one square at a time. Pepper was his Queen, Maggie reflected with a small smile as she set down the King; flying across the board, protecting him, with lots of power and room to move.

So what did that make Maggie? Her eyes immediately fixed on a pawn, small and round and limited. She picked it up, rolled it over in her fingers. Was this what she was? Was she fooling herself that she had any control over this situation at all? She was imprisoned, and though the terms of her imprisonment were certainly nice, they came at the cost of being a literal pawn in Ross's game. If she continued along this path then Tony lost his free will, just as surely as she'd lost hers under HYDRA. Hundreds of people would never know why their loved ones had died. Not only that, but Ross would have the identity of every enhanced person in the world – and who knew what he'd do with that information.

Maggie scowled and put down the pawn.

 _What am I doing?_ She groaned, mind still reeling with faces and names and her utter helplessness, but then her eyes caught on an odd shape amongst the other pieces on the table before her. It was one of her knights, lying on its side at the edge of the board. Maggie remembered what Vision had said, when he was first teaching her:  _Only a pawn or a knight can initiate the first move of the game._

She reached out and ran her fingers over the horse-head shape of the knight, following the thought:  _the knight isn't the most powerful piece, but it makes moves that no one else can. Moves that no one else sees coming._

Her eyes darted back and forth, thoughts crystallizing, and her fingers closed around the piece.

Vision walked into the room with a steaming mug in his hands. "Here's your hot chocolate, Maggie. Are you feeling alright?"

Maggie stared at the opposite wall, the knight clutched in her hand and her thoughts suddenly clear.

"Maggie?" Vision came closer, frowning down at her.

She looked up. "Hey." Her voice sounded loud in her ears. "Thanks for that. Do you mind if I take it to my room?"

"Certainly," he agreed, handing the mug over as she stood up. He didn't see the chess piece in her hand. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she assured him, already heading for the door. "There's something I have to do."

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing Maggie did was hide her plans from F.R.I.D.A.Y. – the A.I. might have been willing to help her this morning, but she wouldn't be on board with what Maggie was intending to do now. She'd worked with the A.I. for weeks now, studying her all the while, so Maggie knew how to hide things from her.

After approximately one minute, F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke: "Ms Stark, it appears I no longer have access to your Stark tablet-"

"Relax, F.R.I.D.A.Y.," Maggie replied nonchalantly. "I'm just messing with it." She'd learned how to lie on a polygraph when she was nine years old, and this wasn't even really a lie. F.R.I.D.A.Y. seemed to accept the explanation, and left her alone.

Maggie worked well into the night, pitting her HYDRA-learned skills against firewalls, artificial intelligences and cyber security in multiple organisations. She did research as well, preparing herself for what was to come.

She'd more or less finished at about 4 in the morning, but she didn't even try to go to bed – there was no way she could sleep after having laid her plan.

So she sat with her back to her false wings, watching the dark forest outside her window and waiting for the sun to creep over the horizon.

 

* * *

 

October 5th, 2016

A few hours later, Tony was striding through a mostly-empty foyer on his way to Selvig's lab when he was accosted by Pepper.

"What the hell, Tony?" She demanded, cornering him by a tasteful potted plant. She put her hands on her hips and shot him a pointed look, eyebrows raised.

He blinked. "I'm sure I deserve this, but would you mind maybe, um… clarifying what it is I've done?"

She sighed and glanced up at the ceiling, searching for strength, and at that moment a young-sounding voice spoke out from the other end of the foyer: "Um, Mr Stark, is this a bad time?" Tony glanced over Pepper's shoulder at Peter, who was standing by Happy's side with his backpack in his hands. "I kinda broke Droney. But I can…" his eyes flicked to Pepper's irritated body language and Tony's wide-eyed confusion. "I can come back, never mind." He spun on his heel and went to walk away, but Happy blocked him.

"I drove him all the way here, boss, do you have a spare minute?" He steered the kid across the foyer.

Tony looked back at Pepper. "I don't know, do I?" Her scowl deepened. "What's… happening?"

"You called a press conference without running it by me first?" she finally prompted, gesturing at the door to the press briefing room. "You know I can't run interference on whatever crazy thing you say if you don't give me a little warning!"

Happy and Peter both looked from Pepper to Tony, wide eyed.

Tony held up his hands. "Though that does sound like something I would do, I didn't call a press conference. At least none that I remember. F.R.I.D.A.Y., did I give you sleep-orders again? I told you not to pay attention to those."

"The request didn't go through me, boss," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied. Happy and Peter turned to Pepper.

Pepper dropped her hands. "Oh." She blinked. "Then why are there dozens of reporters in the briefing room right now, but I don't have anything on the books?"

Tony shrugged. "Beats me."

"No, seriously Tony, the only person who could arrange a press conference  _here_ of all places without me knowing is  _you_ , and that's because you're the only one who knows how to electronically bypass all the press protocols."

At that moment a door on the far side of the foyer opened. Tony, Pepper, Happy, and Peter looked up, and their eyes widened in near-identical expressions of surprise when Maggie walked in. She shut the door behind her and looked up, and her face hardened as she saw the four of them gathered at the other end of the foyer. She took a steadying breath, and walked forward.

Maggie looked different. Normally she walked around in jeans and t-shirts – comfortable clothes – but she'd gone for an entirely different wardrobe today. She wore a deep red blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt, and her expensive-looking black pumps clicked on the floor with each step she took. Her dark hair was twisted into a chignon at the back of her head. She strode toward them with determination clear in her expression, looking as though she belonged in this ultra-modern, professional space.

As she drew closer, Pepper realized that the clothes looked familiar.

Tony frowned. "Maggot, what are you doing? You better clear out, there's a bunch of reporters here."

Maggie set her shoulders and kept walking. "I know."

That took a few seconds to sink in. Then, all at once, Pepper said "What?"; Peter glanced around at the adults and asked "Wait, what's going on?"; and Happy, ever the security expert, frowned and asked "How did you get out of your cell?"

Maggie didn't respond and she didn't stop. She came right up to them and then walked past, her gaze now fixed on the door to the briefing room.

Tony's stomach plummeted. He ran after her, dodged around her and threw up his hands. "What are you doing?" he asked, eyes wide and his breath coming fast. He had a terrible feeling about this, and the look of hardened resolve in Maggie's eyes didn't reassure him one bit. He grabbed her arms to hold her in place, the expensive fabric of her blouse sliding under his fingers.

She met his eyes. "I'm doing this, Tony," she said. "I need you to trust me."

He held her gaze for a few long moments, his heart pounding. He wasn't sure what was happening, but it felt like the protective bubble he'd built around Maggie was about to burst from within. And yet he couldn't deny the look in her eyes.

His fingers tightened on her arms, but then he let her go. She shot him a small smile, then strode toward the briefing room door, swung it open without a moment's hesitation, and walked inside. The sound of muted discussion and snapping cameras rose in volume, but it washed over Tony as unintelligible data. He stared after his sister as the door closed behind her, a look of blank shock on his face.

Pepper appeared by his side, murmured "Tony, stay out here," then slipped into the room after Maggie.

"Mr Stark?" Tony flinched at the sound of a young voice much closer than he'd expected, but he couldn't look away from the briefing room door. He felt a hand on his elbow.

"C'mon, Mr Stark, I think you'd better sit down."

He let himself be steered toward the nearest seat and sank onto it. He was dimly aware of himself asking F.R.I.D.A.Y. to give him a live feed from inside the briefing room.

 

* * *

 

Maggie hadn't planned for anyone to see her before she appeared in the briefing room, so having to walk past not just Tony, but Pepper, Happy, and Peter, had been a shock. Guilt and uncertainty swirled in her gut as she closed the door behind her, senses alert to the way every eye in the room swung to her.

That encounter had been the only surprise, however – it had been difficult, but she'd been able to break out of her cell, slip through the facility toward Pepper and Tony's room to steal (borrow) Pepper's clothes, and then make her way to the briefing room. She supposed that meant she could escape for good if she felt like it, but right now that was the last thing she wanted.

She shook away the thoughts and focused, striding toward the podium set up at the front of the room. The briefing room was nice, filled with light and with a burnished metal Avengers logo behind the podium. She didn't meet anyone's eye just yet but her every sense was trained on the reporters in the crowd. It was clear that at least some of them recognised her from her mugshot, if the sudden outbreak of gasps and whispers was anything to go by.

She found herself standing behind the podium, and finally looked up at the crowd.

 _Crap, that's a lot of people._ She'd sent an invitation to every media group on Pepper's usual press conference list, but seeing them on a list and seeing all their faces staring back at her was another thing. The hum of conversation and frantic whispers died down as they gave her their full attention.

A ripple of nerves ran through her. She'd never spoken in public before – she did some research last night about public speaking, but she knew better than most that research alone didn't always cut it. She swallowed and ran her hands along the podium to steady herself.

She caught a flash of movement to her left, and realised that Pepper had followed her into the room and now stood against the wall beside the podium, her anxious eyes fixed on Maggie. The message in her eyes was clear –  _if you need me to take control of this, say the word._  Maggie nodded at her, then looked out at the crowd.

She took a long, slow breath in and out, and began.

"My name is Maggie Stark," she said, her voice carrying across the now-silent room. "And I'm here to put an end to twenty five years of silence."


	57. Chapter 57

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday, lovelies! A reviewer recently gave me a great music recommendation for this fic, if any of you have similar recommendations I'd love to hear them! (or just music recommendations in general, I'm not fussy).
> 
> Also: there's an email address in this chapter - pls don't send emails to that address because idk who owns it, but it's not me.

 

 

"My name is Maggie Stark, and I'm here to put an end to twenty five years of silence."

The words felt like freedom, and Maggie's nerves began to fade. The reporters, already silent, leaned in.

She cleared her throat. "In 1991, when I was five years old, I was taken by an organisation called HYDRA. They…" she frowned, and steeled herself. "They turned me into a weapon." A low murmur rippled through the crowd. She could see most of the reporters scribbling on notepads. The video cameras were trained on her, and every few seconds there was a  _snap_ and a flash of light as her picture was taken.

"I killed people," she continued, keeping her gaze fixed on her audience. "Spied on people. Stole. Intimidated. Fought in wars. I didn't want to, but I did it." She pressed her lips together, and gripped the podium. "But that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I want to offer a chance at justice for my victims. For the families of my victims. I want to give resolution to people who don't know what happened to their loved ones. They deserve answers." She took another long, slow, breath. "My memories are… fragmented, but I recall more and more every day. I've been complying with investigators from government agencies across the world, but…" she trailed off, aware that she was treading a dangerous line here. There was a difference between expressing a commitment to public accountability and sounding like an anti-government conspiracy theorist.

She straightened her shoulders. "I spent twenty two years of my life suppressing the truth for HYDRA, often violently, and I'm not comfortable complying with institutional secrecy any longer." She let go of the podium and spread her hands. "So here I am. I won't hide behind the State Department, or the Accords Committee, or the Avengers. I'm going to come clean about the violence that I spent most of my life perpetrating, and I'm going to put an end to HYDRA's remaining secrets. I'll leave the form that takes up to the State Department and the Accords Committee. A hearing, a trial, a  _public_ investigation, it doesn't matter – as long as it's publicly accountable." Most of her audience were on the edges of their seats now, alternating between glancing at each other out of the corner of their eyes and staring up at her.

Maggie nodded once. "In the meantime, for the people out there searching for answers, you can reach me at margaretastark@gmail.com, and I will work to the best of my ability to help you." She straightened her spine and gave her audience a steely-eyed look. "I'll take questions now."

She'd prepared herself for it, but the sudden roar of noise as every reporter in the room flung their hands into the air and shouted questions almost made her take a step back. But she planted her feet and pointed to someone in the front row, relieved when that seemed to make the uproar die down.

It turned out she'd chosen the representative from a huge national broadcast corporation, a brunette woman in a blue blouse who lowered her hand and then spoke. "Ms Stark, why are you only breaking your silence now, months after your arrest?"

Maggie nodded and rested her hands on the podium. "Well I'm actually not supposed to, I'm doing this against the wishes of the Accords Committee. They… didn't know this was going to happen. No one did. But like I said, I'm coming forward because it's time the things I did in the dark came to light." She hesitated, then added: "Also, I don't know if I was ever arrested? No one ever read me my rights." The reporters muttered amongst themselves, and Maggie steeled herself. "Next question?"

The flurry of movement didn't startle her so much this time, and she pointed to someone sitting a little further away. The reporters instantly quieted – they seemed to sense that they had limited time with her.

This reporter checked their notepad before glancing up again. "You mentioned that your memories are fragmented, can you elaborate on that?"

Maggie kept her face blank as she nodded. It wasn't really the sort of question she wanted, but she supposed it was fair. "HYDRA used a device called a Memory Suppression Machine on its assets," she explained, and couldn't quite keep the thread of nervousness out of her voice. "It… it was a chair. It used targeted electrical shocks to attack the neural pathways that create and store memories. It was used on me before missions, after missions, anywhere from once a day to every three weeks. Once I got out I started to regain my memories, but it's been a long process." She swallowed. "Next question?"

Her next choice was a balding man wearing a blue tie. "How exactly do you intend to give resolution to victims?"

"The HYDRA information dump shed a lot of light on what they were doing," Maggie answered, "but I believe I can offer more information. I was HYDRA's weapon for twenty two years, they used me for everything from assassination, to intelligence, to protecting their most senior members. The world deserves to know the extent of HYDRA's influence."

As Maggie chose her next questioner, she had a sudden flash realization of just how much her life had changed – a few months ago she'd have fled at the very  _idea_ of public scrutiny, and here she was, inviting it. She shot a quick glance at Pepper. The other woman looked even more anxious than she had at the beginning, but she hadn't stepped in to shut the press conference down yet, so Maggie took that as a good sign.

She chose someone in the front row again. "Ms Stark, do you believe you should face justice for your crimes?"

"Absolutely," she replied. "That's why I'm here. I want the justice system to do with me what it thinks is right. And in the meantime, bring the details of my life under HYDRA to light."

Aware of how much time she'd already been in front of the cameras, she chose her next reporter quickly.

"Why did you fight against the Accords?"

Maggie took a moment to answer that one – it wasn't a question she'd anticipated. "I didn't intend to fight against anything," she eventually said. "I knew that Helmut Zemo was the man behind the Vienna attack, and I wanted to bring him to justice."

They seemed to accept that, so she nodded to another reporter.

"Ms Stark, Secretary Ross assures the public that the investigation into your criminal activity is progressing well, are you saying that he's hiding things from the public?"

She kept her face blank. "Not at all, I–"

At that moment the door to the briefing room burst open, admitting a team of facility security who filed in and made a beeline for the podium.

Maggie turned back to her audience and offered them a polite smile. "Sorry, I think that's all we have time for today." The first agent reached her the moment she finished her sentence, putting his hand on her shoulder and steering her away from the podium. The crowd of reporters exploded into noise once more as they all jumped up and started shouting questions after her.

Maggie could take the agent down – could probably take the whole team down, if she felt like it – but she allowed herself to be propelled out of the room to a cacophony of shouts and cameras flashing. She felt dizzy, the steady influx of adrenaline rushing through her veins and mingling with her thundering emotions.

 

Once she'd been rushed out the briefing room door the security agents slowed down, as if their only orders were to get her off camera. They kept their hands on her arms, though.

Tony was there, his eyes as round as coins as he rushed to meet her. The security agents luckily let her stop when he approached, and for a few moments they just stared at each other. Tony looked utterly blown away – his mouth slightly ajar, his face blank with shock, and his eyes flashing with dozens of unreadable emotions, one flickering into life after another.

Peter and Happy stood a few feet behind Tony with similarly astounded looks on their faces. Vision and Rhodey had also appeared, Rhodey looking flustered and Vision's expression etched with concern.

Maggie didn't know what her face revealed as she looked back at them, but she was aware of her chest rising and falling as if she'd just run a race, and her fingers trembling by her sides.

Tony opened and closed his mouth, as if he couldn't decide what to say first. He eventually settled on: "Gmail?  _Really_?"

She let out a shaky laugh, and reached up to brush her hair away from her eyes. The movement luckily got the security agents to let go of her. The four of them hovered by her side as if she would bolt at any moment.

She collected her thoughts, then met Tony's eyes again. "Um. Sorry about going behind your back on this."

He shook his head. "I know why you did. I  _definitely_ wouldn't have let you do this."

"I figured."

Rhodey sighed. "Jesus Christ, Maggie, what did you do?"

Her eyes flashed up to him and her words were edged with iron when she replied: "the right thing." That seemed to take Rhodey aback. Vision didn't say anything, but the lines of concern in his face deepened.

Tony glanced at the security agents, who seemed to be listening to something over their comms, and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"

She inhaled through her nose. "I, um… kind of feel like I've got pins and needles… in my brain? Does that make sense?"

"No," Peter piped up from a few feet away. Maggie closed her eyes and laughed to herself, feeling a wave of emotions crash through her. She needed to go for a long run or sleep for like, ten hours.

It seemed the security agents had another idea in mind. A hand appeared at her elbow again, making her flinch, and the guy in charge shot Tony an apologetic look. "We've got orders to move her to a secure room, Mr Stark."

"Okay," Maggie breathed, cutting off the argument she could see sparking in Tony's eyes, and they steered her away again. Tony, Peter, Happy, Vision, and Rhodey kept pace with her and her guards, and seconds later Pepper left the briefing room and hastened to catch up with them, her heels clicking on the floor. As they walked, Maggie looked over at Pepper.

"Hey."

"Hi," Pepper breathed, speed-walking to keep up with the security agents' pace. Her eyes were wide and her face was flushed, but she seemed a little more with it than Maggie felt. "Are you okay?"

"People keep asking me that," Maggie noted. "It's almost like you all think I did something crazy."

She heard Peter's high, slightly hysterical laugh from somewhere behind her, and Rhodey's groan. Pepper's eyes widened further before she gave her a tentative smile.

Maggie swallowed. "How did I do?"

"Great," Pepper replied, as if she'd been waiting for the question. "Honestly, you…" she shook her head. "I couldn't look away."

"People usually say that about seeing a car crash happening," Tony grumbled, his voice edged with the frustration she'd expected.

Her entourage didn't seem to know quite what to say, and a minute later she was ushered into one of the meeting rooms overlooking the lake. The agents wouldn't let anyone else into the room with her, so she was abruptly alone with her thoughts, in a room with nothing but a conference table, office chairs, and a pot plant in the corner – a ficus, if she wasn't mistaken.

Maggie let out a long breath and went to stand by the window. The sudden silence jarred her senses, and she let the aftershocks of her emotions flow through her, making her heart pound and her fingers shake when she reached out to touch the glass. She could hear people arguing in the corridor outside, but she couldn't focus on that. She fixed her gaze on the glittering river and considered the enormity of what she'd just done.

 

* * *

 

Ross was, to put it mildly, displeased.

He stormed into the meeting room forty minutes later, his face flushed red and his hands clenched into fists by his sides. He was flanked by the facility security agents and five soldiers, who fanned out around the room as he marched straight toward her. Tony slipped into the room before the door closed.

Maggie turned around and met Ross's fury with calm.

"You conniving traitor," he spat. He strode right up to her and got in her face, his eyes dark and his mustache actually  _quivering._ "I don't know what you were thinking, but you've just destroyed any chance at goodwill from me – I hope you enjoyed the Raft, Ms Stark, because you've just signed your transfer form."

Ross continued to shout in her face, and she distantly realized that she'd never seen him this angry. But his anger didn't scare her, and neither did his words. Because she could see that he didn't really mean them. Despite his shouted accusations of thoughtlessness and stupidity, she'd thought this through. She'd pushed his hand today. She'd stood up in front of the world and asked to be seen, and she wouldn't be forgotten so easily – the world was expecting answers now, and if Maggie went missing then they'd know who was to blame.

Ross paced like a caged tiger, and Maggie reached down to touch the knight chesspiece in her pocket.  _Move in ways they don't expect._

Tony glared at Ross, but he took Maggie's silence as his cue and kept his mouth shut.

"You've jeopardized our entire investigation," Ross fumed. "You don't get to decide how justice is done,  _Ms Stark_ , you're the criminal here-"

"You're right," she interrupted, her voice a calm undercurrent to his shouts. "The people decide. That's all I asked for."

A vein jumped in Ross's forehead. "Oh, shut up-"

" _Hey_ ," Tony cut in, glaring, but Ross turned on him now.

"Don't get me started on you, Mr Stark, you're clearly incapable of being her jailer, I don't know why I trusted you in the first place-"

"Leave him out of it," Maggie said. "I did this. Not him."

Ross obliged and went back to shouting at her, and Maggie weathered the words like a statue in a storm. She didn't have anything to say to him – she'd made this bigger than him, now. Tony kept watch with a deep scowl on his face, ready to step in if Ross's anger went further than words.

Eventually Ross seemed to tire of her calm response to his anger, or he shouted himself out, because he stopped yelling and turned to face her fully, shoulders heaving. "Fine," he said, and his tone made Maggie start paying attention again. He worked his jaw, glaring at her. "You want justice? You'll get it."

He made a gesture to his men and turned to walk out, his rage still crackling in the air around him like a thunderstorm.

"Stark, out!" Ross shouted as he walked out the door, but Tony hesitated. He met Maggie's gaze, brow pinched and eyes wide. She nodded and he left.

"No one in or out of this room!" she heard Ross shout to his soldiers, who took up positions by the door. "And under no circumstances is she to have any access to a computer or a phone."

The door slammed shut, and Maggie pulled out a chair. She didn't know what was coming, but she'd made her move. Now she had to wait.

 

* * *

 

She waited two hours this time, and was starting to get hungry, but it wasn't Ross who came through the door next. In fact, it wasn't the door that opened.

She was slumped against the table, head resting on her folded arms, when she heard a faint, high-pitched sound. Her head jumped up. It sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place it… She glanced around, and her eyes widened when she spotted a dark, smoldering line creeping across one of the meeting room walls. As she watched the line it glowed red and widened, carving out the shape of a door.

She suddenly realized that the sound was Iron Man's gauntlet laser, and jumped to her feet. Seconds later, the door-shaped hole in the wall detached with a muffled _crunch_ and fell backwards, revealing Iron Man himself. He caught the falling section of wall and lowered it to the floor, no doubt to conceal the noise from the soldiers and guards outside, and then the suit retracted to reveal Tony, his hair askew.

"Tony, what the  _hell_ ," Maggie breathed, staring at him as he rushed through the newly-created door.

But Tony ignored her. First he moved to the room's  _actual_ door and put his ear to it, checking to make sure the guards hadn't heard anything, then rushed to Maggie and grabbed her elbow. "You've gotta go," he urged in a low tone. He steered her to the hole in the wall, eyeing the closed door.

"Wait, what?" She dug her heels in and jerked her arm so Tony had to look at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Maggie,  _come on-_ "

"No, explain! Are you…" she glanced up at the hole in the wall, and then the dormant Iron Man armor. "Are you breaking me out?"

" _Yes_ ," he said, his brow furrowed and a muscle in his jaw jumping. "I don't have time to explain it all but Ross called your bluff, Maggie, he's teamed up with the DOJ and the US Attorney's Office, they're calling a Grand Jury  _today._ " His eyes darkened, and she suddenly realized that he was terrified _._ "They're going to charge you with murder and espionage and a whole bunch of other crap – they're on their way right now to take you to jail, c'mon."

A wave of shock overwhelmed Maggie and she allowed herself to be dragged a few steps toward the next room, but then she planted her feet again. "Stop," she breathed.

Tony shook his head. "It's okay, Maggie, I was selfish before, I didn't want to let you go – but you need to run, now." His voice was low and earnest. "Peter's going to cause a distraction, and Rhodey and Vision are working on a way to get you through the forest and up to Canada. I'm going to call Steve, look-" he fumbled in his pocket and presented a flip phone, showing her the one number on it. "He gave it to me in case I ever needed him, I know he'll make sure they don't find you, just… trust me, we need to move now."

Maggie stared at the flip phone. All this time, he'd had a way to speak to Steve. And he was going to use it now to - to...

She reached for the flip phone and met Tony's eyes as she closed it carefully. "I'm sorry, Tony. But I'm not running away."

He met her eyes for the first time since entering the room, and his expression darkened. "Dammit Maggie, you don't have to make yourself a freaking martyr, there's no purpose-"

"I'm not making myself a martyr." She handed the closed phone back to him, and laid her palm over the hand still clutching her arm. "It's just… this is what I have to do. I know it. I've been hiding my whole life, it's time to stop."

Tony looked into her eyes, and she saw the moment he realized he couldn't change her mind about this. The urgency drained out of his eyes and his body slumped, shoulders sagging.

"Maggie," he croaked, searching her face. His chin quivered, just once, and his dark eyes shined.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, and now it was her turn to tug him, pulling him into her arms and holding tight. His chest heaved and his fingers scrabbled for purchase on her back before holding her against him just as tightly. Maggie looked up at the ceiling and fought back tears, her heart pounding against her ribs. "Thank you," she whispered. "For offering. I know it must have been hard."

He made a sound that was either a laugh or a sob. "Would've worked, if you weren't such a principled pain in the ass."

"I know, I'm sorry."

"Why'd you do it, Maggie?" She couldn't see his face because his chin was tucked over her shoulder, but she knew what he was talking about.

She sighed. "I meant everything that I said. I did it because I want to help people. But I also… I don't want to be Ross's pawn any more. Doing this means he can't hold me over your head." He let go of her and took a step back to stare at her face. His own face was crumpled with pain. She smiled at him. "Don't let him bully you anymore. Run the Avengers – and your own life – how you want."

The look on Tony's face was similar to the one he'd given her when she was escorted out of the briefing room this morning: surprise, mingled with amazement, frustration, and a little bit of pride. "You didn't have to do that," he eventually gritted out.

She shrugged. "But I did."

He swallowed again. "I'm going to get you lawyers. A goddamn  _army_ of lawyers. We're going to fight this, Maggie, they can't send you to jail."

"Thank you, Tony," she said softly. She hadn't even thought about  _lawyers._

Suddenly, F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice cut through the moment. "The US Marshals are on their way up, Boss. Mr Parker is asking when you'd like him to begin the distraction."

Tony closed his eyes for a second, his fingers flexing by his sides. After a long moment, he opened his eyes and looked right at Maggie as he said "call Peter off, F.R.I.D.A.Y. And ask Pepper to start looking for the best goddamn lawyers in the country."

"Sure, Boss." There was a brief pause, and then the A.I. added. "Best of luck, Ms Stark."

"Thank you, F.R.I.D.A.Y." Maggie took a breath. "Tony, don't let them search my room, please. And…" the ticking seconds suddenly hit her, and she thought frantically about whatever loose ends she might have left. "Thank Peter, Vision, and Rhodey for me. And tell Vision I think I might beat him at chess next time. And… be nice to Dum-E and U. And you – don't try to lose yourself in work, and don't do anything stupid to protect me, and-" she could feel herself getting worked up at the mention of the friends and family she'd made here, and as the knowledge that everything was about to change hit her.

"I'll take care of it," Tony reassured her, his brow pinching. "Come here." He pulled her in for another desperate hug.

"Thank you," she mumbled into his shoulder. "For  _everything._ And I'm sorry for… for not coming home after HYDRA, and for everything that happened with the Avengers, and I'm sorry for Siberia, I-"

"Stop that," he murmured, giving her another squeeze. "You're going to jail, not a firing squad. If you want to chat just send me a collect-call, I can probably afford it."

She chuckled wetly, and that was the moment the door opened to admit ten well-armed, grim-faced US Marshals. Maggie let go of Tony and allowed them to fasten an enhanced restraining device around her wrists. She got one more look at her brother, with his slumped shoulders and ashen face, before the Marshals marched her out of the room to meet her fate.


	58. Chapter 58

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: This story is now a journey in multimedia! The beautiful images below (you'll know when you see them) are thanks to the wonderful Travelilah.  
> The tweets were made by me with much sweat and tears (thankfully no blood)

 

" _\- international uproar-_ "

 

"-  _shock press conference-_ "

 

" _-sister, AKA the Wyvern, was seen being escorted into a Manhattan jail earlier this afternoon-"_

 

" _\- really no doubt as to the outcome of the Grand Jury-_ "

 

" _The Grand Jury are expected to come to a decision on whether or not to indict Ms Stark by the end of today or early tomorrow-_ "

 

" -  _over thirty counts of first degree murder, along with charges of domestic terrorism, espionage, treason, kidnapping, grand larceny, and numerous other crimes_."

 

"-  _means we can expect an arraignment in a matter of days, but-_ "

 

" _\- international sensation. The world is watching New York City._ "

 

* * *

 

WHiH World News Broadcast

"Well, Will," said Christine Everhart, shuffling her papers. "We've just seen the now-infamous Margaret Stark press appearance. I've gotta say, she's got the family flair for throwing dramatic press conferences."

"Actually I disagree," replied WHiH's political correspondent Will Adams. "The shock value might be similar, but I'm not alone in thinking that Maggie Stark doesn't share her brother's usual sarcastic, casual way of addressing the media. Commentators have been calling her eloquent, dignified-"

"Sure, she's articulate," Christine cut in, holding up a hand, "but it seems public reaction has been focused more on the  _content_ of her address. Ms Stark said she aimed to clear the waters, but at the end of the day people have more questions than ever. Let's have a look at some reactions, shall we?"

The screen cut from the newsroom to a series of reactions from members of the public, stopped on their way down the street.

"She said that HYDRA turned her into a weapon," said an elderly woman with a shopping bag. "But I don't understand, what does that mean?"

A long-haired man covered in tattoos gestured passionately at the camera as he exclaimed. "Five years old?  _Five years old_?"

A professional-looking woman crossed her arms. "I'm confused – the Secretary of State said that Ms Stark was a 'major aggressor' against the Accords, but now she says she didn't fight against them? Who are we supposed to believe?"

The clip cut back to the newsroom. Will Adams nodded gravely. "People have also been expressing their questions and reactions on social media. This user" – a tweet appeared on the screen beside his head – "states ' _She said she didn't want to do any of what she did – so why did she do it?'_ "

Christine folded her hands together. "Some have been theorizing that brainwashing may be a factor, but with so little evidence that's a big leap to make. There are also questions about the 'Memory Suppression Machine' that Ms Stark mentioned – this Twitter user writes:  _That sounds horrific, how did we not know about this?,_ while others express skepticism about her claims."

"That's true, Christine," Will acknowledged, "though some people are disappointed that a Grand Jury was called in response to Ms Stark's press conference – more than a few political commentators have noted that the Department of Justice has had months to indict Ms Stark, though they only chose to do so when she said she wanted to speak up about her actions. We all know of the senator who only hours ago claimed that the US Government was 'hushing her up'."

Christine flashed her teeth at him. "Isn't the Department of Justice perfectly within their rights to indict a self-admitted criminal after a period of investigation? Besides, Margaret Stark admitted to the world that she was acting against the Accords Committee's wishes –  _multiple_ senators and other spokespersons have said that Ms Stark ought to do as she's told."

"But Christine," Will replied, spreading his hands, "We've heard precious little from the Department of Justice – or indeed,  _any_ department or agency, about HYDRA's scope of influence and the Wyvern's actions. The 2014 Department of Defense inquiry into the HYDRA affair was notoriously close-lipped about what they found, citing national security. Don't we have a right to know what Maggie Stark wants to tell us?"

"National security trumps our curiosity, Will-"

"But Ms Stark didn't say she wants to release national secrets – she said she wants to address individual crimes and individual people. There's a lot of power in that."

Christine turned back to the camera. "Well, we'll continue to cover this story as it unfolds. Up next…"

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

helen  
@pascallbaby   
Ross needed a scapegoat in cpt Rogers absence #thewyvern #margaretstark #freeher  8:05 PM - 5 October 2016  3150  13.7K 

Bill Keys  
@billkeys24   
Humbling to see someone completely accepting of justice for their crimes #margaretstark 9:24 PM - 5 October 2016  257  986 

Katherine  
@queenkat   
Margaret Stark seemingly unafraid of the justice system in her press conference - is arrogance hereditary? #starkravingmad 0:12 AM - 6 October 2016  856  3146 

Jack.  
@thejackhammer   
Glad to see justice working swiftly and well, for once. #thewyvern #convicther 5:45 AM - 6 October 2016  655  4512 

 

* * *

 

October 6th, 2016  
Alanya, Turkey

"Steve."

Steve jerked awake, reaching for a shield that wasn't there and then turning on his attacker, fists raised – only to see Natasha standing a few feet away from his mattress on the floor, eyeing him with one eyebrow cocked.

He lowered his fists and sighed. "Aren't you meant to be in Syria?" They'd split up for a while after a mission in Iraq, in case anyone came after them.

Natasha tipped her head, newly-blonde hair brushing her shoulder. "I'm guessing you haven't seen the news."

The back of his neck prickled. "Oh god, what happened." He stood up from where he'd been kneeling on his mattress and rushed to his go-bag, but then realized he'd ditched his phone and didn't have any way of reading the news. He glanced back at Natasha, who pulled a smartphone out of her jacket and turned it toward him to show him a video.

His stomach dropped when he saw Maggie standing at the podium of none other than the Avengers press briefing room. She took a breath, and Steve suddenly saw Tony in every line of her face – her lifted chin, the firm line of her brows, and the determination burning in her eyes. Steve had seen that look plenty of times throughout his friendship with Tony and he knew that what followed was probably going to be very brave, or very stupid. Maggie opened her mouth.

" _My name is Margaret Stark, and I'm here to put an end to twenty five years of silence._ "

The blood drained from Steve's face.

 

When the video ended, Natasha silently exited out of the app and then showed him a list of headlines from around the world:

_Grand Jury indicts Margaret Stark on dozens of counts of murder._

_Wyvern Arraignment Scheduled for October 7_ _th_ _, 2016._

 _"_ _Unquestionably Guilty": Secretary Ross speaks out about Margaret Stark press conference and indictment._

"The world's gone nuts again," Natasha said, calm as ever. "Maggie's going to trial, and at this point I honestly have no idea how that's going to go. Seems like the public's divided, but I'm seeing a lot more calls to convict than to acquit. And with the U.S. Government and the Accords Committee against her…" she sighed. "No word from Tony yet, but it sounds like he had no idea this was going to happen."

Steve swore and sat down in the single chair in his safehouse. He put his head in his hands. "Bucky's going to kill me."

Natasha didn't disagree.

After a brief moment of despair, Steve lifted his head again and looked at the phone in Natasha's hands, which displayed a still of Maggie's determined face at her press conference. "Okay," he said, wiping his palms on his jeans. "Let's work out a plan."

 

* * *

 

Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York City

"Hey, Tony."

"Hey, Maggot."

For a long moment Maggie and Tony just looked at each other through the glass panel that split the prison meeting room, phones pressed against their ears. Tony looked as smart as ever in his expensive suit and F.R.I.D.A.Y.-equipped glasses, but Maggie was in scrubs again. This time the scrubs were orange. Her hands, gripping the phone, were bound together by heavy-duty handcuffs designed for enhanced people.

Tony ran his eyes over her face. She looked fine after her night in prison, but he knew she was good at hiding her emotions, particularly when she didn't want to worry him. "Are you okay?" he asked. "You're being treated alright, you've got food?"

She nodded, and smiled at him. "I'm okay, really. I'm in a cell by myself, because of the whole enhanced-person thing, but I'm fine. It's only been a day. How are you?"

"I can't say I love the Orange-Is-The-New-Black look," he replied with a grimace. "It's not your color."

Maggie's eyes flicked over his shoulder. "Who're your friends?"

Tony glanced over his shoulder at the visitors he'd brought with him: a woman in her mid-forties with black hair and sharp eyes, and a taller, older man wearing glasses and holding a briefcase. They were both impeccably dressed in suits, and at Tony's nod they came to sit beside him on the visitor's side, reaching for their own phones to talk to Maggie.

Tony turned back to her. "These are your lawyers," he explained. "It was kind of a rush, but Pepper says their firm is the best in the state of New York. They're not under Stark Industries contract, Pepper said that would be a conflict of interest."

"I get it," Maggie said, and nodded to the pair. "Um, hi."

The man smiled at her. "Nice to meet you, Ms Stark. My name is Diego Martinez, and this is Andrea Kemp. We've got over fifty years of criminal law defense experience between us, and our firm has a highly competitive success rate. Mr Stark has hired our firm for your defense, is that acceptable to you?"

"They're really good, Maggie," Tony added, his fingers white on the phone.

He watched Maggie's eyes dart between the two lawyers, assessing them. After a pause, she asked: "Ever seen a case like mine?"

This time the woman – Kemp – spoke. "No," she replied, eyes fixed on Maggie's. "Your case is unique in the history of criminal law, and we've had less than a day to review it, but after discussions with Mr Stark and a brief review of the evidence, we're confident that we've got a good foundation to help you from."

Maggie bit her lip, still looking from one attorney to another. Her eyes flickered to Tony, just once, and then she sighed. "Okay. Let's do this."

"Wonderful," said Kemp. "Now, the indictment's been filed and the arraignment hearing has been set for tomorrow morning. This is what you can expect in the coming days…"

 

Tony sat in for the rest of the meeting as Maggie's attorneys explained the charges filed against her and what was to come. Mr Martinez and Mrs Kemp had folders and folders full of their initial files on the case, and they explained that that was just the beginning – they'd reviewed the charges and the bare facts of the case, but there was lots more work to be done.

"One of the purposes of the arraignment hearing is to determine a plea," Kemp explained. "There are a few options available to us. First, you plead guilty."

Tony's face twisted but he forced himself to hold his tongue. Maggie nodded once, waiting for Kemp to continue.

"Second, you plead not guilty and wait for a plea deal offer from the prosecution – the US Attorney's office has appointed David Mallory to be your prosecutor, and he's got a history of offering plea deals. And given the many vested interests in this case, political and otherwise, it's likely one will be offered."

"It's risky," Martinez added, adjusting his glasses. "But it's a viable option."

"Third," Kemp continued, "we plead not guilty and fight for it."

"That's an option?" Tony blurted out, drawing everyone's attention. "That'd work?"

Maggie smiled at him. Kemp and Martinez shared a glance.

"At this stage it's impossible to say," Martinez said, his face open as he met first Tony's gaze, then Maggie's. "Ms Stark, we spoke with your brother before coming here and it sounds like we're talking about a criminal defense based on brainwashing, or coercion – a kind of mental disorder defense. There have only been a few historical cases that used brainwashing as a defense, and I'll be honest with you – they didn't end well. I think the circumstances here are vastly different, and we'll have to sort through the evidence available to us, but that's the precedent we have to work with."

Tony reached up to rub at the headache forming between his eyes. "But she didn't have any  _choice,_ " he said.

"And that's what we'll prove to the jury," Kemp said, her eyes softening for a moment.

Maggie took a long breath, then said: "Okay, so… as my lawyers, what do you recommend?"

Kemp and Martinez shared another glance. "We think a not-guilty plea at tomorrow's arraignment is your best option at this moment. From there we can negotiate a plea deal, or decide to go ahead with the trial."

Maggie hesitated, and her eyes darted toward Tony. He met her gaze, nervously bouncing his knee under the desk.

"I don't know what to do," she whispered, her dark eyes glimmering. "I  _did_ those things, Tony. I can still speak out from prison, should I… do I even have the right to fight this?"

Tony opened his mouth to reply, but Kemp interrupted him. "You absolutely have the right," she cut in, with an edge of steel to her voice. Tony's brows lifted and he turned to face her. "Ms Stark, I may not be an expert on your case yet, but the justice system of this country dictates that  _everyone_ , including you, has the right to a fair trial. It's not often that I meet a client unwilling to protest their innocence, but if even half of what your brother told me is true then I think it's important that a jury of your peers hears that evidence and decides. I understand you want justice for your victims, Ms Stark. But allow us to seek justice for  _you_."

Mrs Kemp's speech left a moment of ringing silence in its wake. Tony glanced from Kemp to Maggie, who was watching the lawyer with an inscrutable expression.

"So you want to fight this," Maggie eventually murmured.

Mr Martinez gave his partner an exasperated look, but Kemp just shuffled the papers in front of her. "My partner and I agree that for now, a not guilty plea is in your best interests. Do you agree?"

Maggie took a deep breath in, her back straightening. "I do."

 

* * *

 

Maggie's attorneys said that it wasn't a good idea for her to publicly discuss anything pertaining to her case, but she currently had  _thousands_ of emails waiting for her in a gmail inbox – most were requests for further comment, abuse, or words of support, but there were also messages from the people Maggie had been reaching out to: victims, family members of victims, and those uncertain of HYDRA's influence on their life.

Tony spoke to Ross and pointed out that it looked really bad that Maggie had been swiftly silenced after her press conference, but Ross basically told him to go screw himself and that was that.

Eventually Tony, Maggie, and her attorneys had worked out a message for F.R.I.D.A.Y. to mass-reply to all the waiting emails.

_At this point in time Maggie Stark is being held by the Department of Justice awaiting trial, and has had all computer rights restricted. Each request for information will now go through her lawyers (contact information below), but Maggie wishes to reaffirm her commitment to providing answers to victims and families of victims, and apologizes for the delay._

 

* * *

 

 

* * *

 

Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Maggie arrived back at the facility in the same clothes she'd left in, rumpled and tired. She could still smell the starched-linen scent of the prison scrubs she'd worn, hovering around her like an omen.

Her US Marshal guards spoke with facility staff about her bail conditions, but she wasn't listening: it had been a long few days, and the sight of the gleaming facility sent a rush of warmth through her. Considering she'd been expecting to be staying in jail for the foreseeable future, she felt impossibly lucky.

Finally, the Marshals left.

Maggie unconsciously rubbed her wrists where the heavy enhanced restraining device had been pressed against her skin. She wore just the Manacle now.

"Dr Nguyen's waiting in the usual room," came Pepper's voice, by her ear. Maggie hadn't seen her approach, but given she'd been staring at the floor that wasn't surprising. She couldn't quite gather the energy to look up at Pepper either, so she followed whoever was leading her until a familiar-looking office door swung open. She stepped inside.

"Maggie," came Dr Nguyen's familiar voice. Maggie followed it to the soft sofa, and sat down gracelessly.

"Hello, Mai," she murmured. She and the doctor had agreed to address each other by their first names a few weeks ago. She found herself looking at the coffee table between herself and the doctor – smooth, dark wood, with a small pot plant on it.

"Tell me how you're feeling," Mai responded in a low voice.

Maggie knew that tone – it was the one Mai used when the therapy got intense, when she wasn't sure what was going on in Maggie's head and didn't know how concerned to be.

"Tired," she said, sinking a little further into the sofa when she admitted it. "Glad to be back. Um… overwhelmed, I guess."

"I don't blame you," Mai said, with a hint of a wry smile in her voice. Maggie finally looked up and met her eyes, and the simple familiarity of the doctor's friendly gaze settled some of the tension crawling up her spine. What she liked about Mai was that she wasn't hard to read. She wasn't a blank, cold face; Mai didn't hide her empathy and concern when Maggie spoke. And even better, Mai was absolutely, unequivocally, on Maggie's side – she wasn't involved in the politics, or the Avengers, and she didn't care about the public reaction. Mai would probably be upset if Maggie went to jail, but it wouldn't break her heart. That realization sent a wave of relief crashing through Maggie.

"Do you visit clients in prison?" she blurted out.

Mai eyed her. "As a matter of fact I do. You think you're going to go to prison?"

"I don't know. Seems like no one knows right now."

"You plead not guilty."

"You read the news," Maggie shot back, then sighed. It wasn't like her to get combative in therapy. And of course Dr Nguyen had been reading the news. "Sorry. Yes, I did. My lawyers said it was the best option for now."

Mai cocked her head at that. "' _Your lawyers said'_ ," she echoed. "Did  _you_  want to plead not guilty?"

Maggie scowled at the coffee table. "I don't know."

"In your press conference, you said you wanted the justice system to do with you what it thought was right. You left the decision to them. It must have been hard to make a choice about your own guilt, at that arraignment hearing."

Maggie shifted on the sofa, bringing her knees up to her chest so she was sitting nearly curled in a ball. She knew what she was doing, she and Mai had talked about defensive body language before, but she couldn't help it. "I didn't know what to choose," she whispered, avoiding Mai's eyes.

"Do you think you  _deserve_ to go to prison?"

A chill ran down Maggie's back.  _That's the question, isn't it?_  She shrugged. "Seems that's not up to me to decide. It's up to a jury of my peers now." She glanced up at Mai, and saw that she hadn't fooled her. She hadn't expected to – Dr Nguyen was wickedly smart, not as smart as Maggie but with the experience and training to back it up. And Maggie had never been very good at lying.

But Mai didn't call her out. Instead, she asked "Would you like my professional opinion?"

She shifted, tucking her chin over her knees. "Um. Okay."

Mai leaned forward. "You've visited me three times a week for two months now, Maggie. I still remember the day we met clearly. I expected to find a broken husk of a person, who knew nothing but violence and death."

Maggie flinched – Mai had never used such language before.

But the other woman wasn't done. "By all rights, given the things you've suffered, you should be that person. But you have… the most incredible will. You  _willed_ yourself to become a person, as you've said. And even that wasn't enough – you willed the world to make room for you, you made a space for yourself on this earth with nothing but your strength of mind and sheer determination. That is not to be taken lightly."

Mai's gaze bore into Maggie's, level and resolute. "You've not only willed yourself to become a person, but you've also found room within yourself for empathy, for helping other people. No, don't look away-" Maggie glanced back up, startled, and met Mai's tawny eyes. "That's why you held that press conference, wasn't it? I wish you'd have discussed it with me beforehand but I understand why you did it." She smiled. "You  _genuinely_ want to help as many people as you can, and that's special. Not only that, but you are astoundingly honest – I've never gotten so far with a client so quickly before and I'm certain that's because even when you're afraid of the truth you face it, pain be damned."

Mai clasped her hands together, eyes still fixed on Maggie's. "So I'd like you to hear me now, hear the truth in my words."

Maggie swallowed. She was shaking – Mai had never spoken like this, so boldly and directly, and she was  _terrified_. Not of the doctor, but of her words. Of what they meant. "Okay," she rasped through dry lips.

Mai leaned forward. "I tell you this from a professional standpoint, Maggie. As someone with many years of experience in psychiatry, with multiple degrees. As someone who knows you, demons and all… it would be a  _travesty_ if they found you guilty of these crimes."

Tears sprang to Maggie's eyes, unbidden. But she couldn't look away.

"Self doubt is normal," Mai said, softer now. "Fear is normal. Guilt is normal. But you  _know_ who you are, Maggie Stark, and what you're guilty of. Stand by that truth."

There was a long silence after that. Maggie found herself crying, hot tears spilling down her cheeks, and Mai circled the coffee table to offer her a tissue. Mai placed one hand on Maggie's shoulder as she cried, curled in a ball, and the touch bloomed with warmth.

After a long cry, the kind that made her feel lighter, Maggie lifted her head and sniffed. "I'll try," she murmured, meeting Mai's eyes.

The other woman smiled. "That's a start."

 

* * *

 

Maggie walked back to her cell alone. She'd asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. not to tell Tony when her appointment with Dr Nguyen finished, because she wanted the walk back to gather her thoughts.

She looked absently out the windows as she paced through the now-familiar corridors. The sun was setting, bathing the facility lawns in orange light. As she watched, a squad of Avengers agents jogged from the aircraft hangar to the residential area.

Before the press conference this facility had felt like a fantasy place, where she could hide from the world and live with her brother and his friends. But now the world knew exactly where she was.

She found that she didn't mind. She'd chosen this, for better or for worse. And now the facility wasn't a fantasy – it was her  _home_.

She was reflecting on the idea of having a home as she walked into the holding facility's main corridor and saw that her cell door was open. An instinctive jolt of fear hit her, but she brushed it aside – she was pretty sure she knew why it was open.

Sure enough, she appeared in the doorway to see her cell filled with three people and one android. Tony and Pepper sat on her couch, their clasped hands resting on Tony's knee; Rhodey was doing physiotherapy exercises while sitting at her desk chair; and Vision stood by the window, watching the sunset.

They all looked terrible – she glanced from one drawn face to another, saw Pepper's anxiously wringing hands and the deep furrow in Rhodey's brow. She sensed a low, buzzing energy under Tony's forced stillness that warned her he was barely holding it together.

 _Right._ She felt exhausted, and drained after her intense therapy session, but it was clear that her newfound family didn't know how to handle this situation. She would have to be the one to turn this around.

"Hey," she said, and all four of them glanced up, wide-eyed. She stepped inside, smiling tiredly, and met Pepper's eyes. "Sorry I stole your clothes and got them impounded in a federal prison."

Pepper smiled back and stopped fidgeting. "That's alright. You look pretty good in them."

She glanced down at the wine-coloured blouse. "Thanks. I might need more clothes like this in the future. Y'know. For court." They all gave her stricken looks, and she sighed. "Look, I know you all think I did a crazy thing, and maybe I did, but this is happening now. The lawyers are coming back tomorrow morning, and we'll go further from there. For now…" she sighed. "I'm here for the foreseeable future so just… stop looking at me like I'm on death's door. I'm here, I'm fine. And I'm really glad I've got you guys on my side." She met their eyes, one by one, to show them that she meant it. They didn't exactly look any happier, but at least they didn't think she was about to lose it.

Maggie kicked off the stupid high heels and sat on her bed. "Did I do the right thing?" she asked in a smaller voice. "Pleading not guilty?"

" _Yes_ ," they all said at once. She blinked at the sudden burst of noise, then looked up to see them sharing bemused smiles. A faltering smile lifted her own lips.

Vision went first. "Brainwashing as a legal defense is rare, but you have a far stronger case than those that have come before," he said. "At this point I am unable to calculate the probability of your winning this trial given I do not have access to all the evidence, and because criminal trials rely on the decision of twelve unknown individuals." He glanced around and saw that wasn't reassuring anyone, so he continued. "But I wish to express my commitment to helping you however I may, Maggie. And…" he met her eyes. "I have hope."

Her eyes, already red from crying, welled with tears again. "Thank you, Vis," she murmured.

Rhodey cleared his throat and waved a Stark tablet at her. "They're saying this is shaping up to be the trial of the century and it hasn't even started yet, Mags. You sure don't do things by halves." His tone was light, but he had that perpetually-worried look about him.

Maggie ducked her head. "I didn't want to make it all about me," she muttered.

"Can't relate," Tony blurted out, and they all turned to look at him. He looked a little surprised at himself for having made a joke in this situation, but then he just shrugged.

Maggie smiled at him. "That reminds me, please don't do anything stupid to protect me, Tony. I saw the footage from those senate hearings about Iron Man a while back, and that… you probably shouldn't do that in a criminal court."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Oh I'm sorry, do something stupid? Like hack into Avengers servers, call a press conference, admit to a bunch of crimes and then get dragged out and sent to prison?"

"Exactly," Maggie agreed. "Don't do anything like that."

Pepper, sensing that they probably weren't going to stop sniping at each other once they started, cut in. "Rhodey's right, though. I don't think I've had to handle this much media coverage since Tony became Iron Man."

"Sorry," Maggie winced.

"Oh, don't be!" Pepper waved a hand. "I can handle it. There's lots of hate and anger out there, but there's also sympathy. Mostly, right now, a lot of questions. And that's not really going to go away until the trial."

Maggie bit her lip. "Right. I've kinda had an idea about that." She glanced at Tony. "I'll need F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help. And Vision's, if you don't mind?" She continued, turning to the android.

"Whatever you need," Vision replied, his eyes warming.

Maggie turned back to Tony, and he gave her a jerky nod. "This better not be as stupid as your last idea, Maggot."

 

* * *

 

12th October 2016

'Victims of HYDRA Support Group' blog post  
Title: HERACLES

_Good morning, survivors._

_Well, we've all been paying pretty close attention to the news since last week's press conference, and it looks like Margaret Stark wasn't just drumming up public support when she committed to providing information to survivors._

_I'm sure you've all sent your own emails to margaretastark@gmail.com, but in case you haven't, or in case you're not sure what to make of the latest mass-reply email, I'm going to lay out the facts:_

_Basically, after sending out a mass email on the 6_ _th_ _telling everyone to go talk to her lawyers instead, Margaret Stark got out on bail. But she didn't leave it at that. Early this morning everyone who'd sent an email to her got another one in return, telling us to refer to a website called_ 'HERACLES'.

_Now if you were like me, you saw that email and went 'what the hell?' But I took one for the team and checked it out, and here's what the site offers:_

  * _A database of all analytics and research groups who have worked on the 2014 S.H.I.E.L.D. information dump, with contact information and a brief about each group's goals, research method, and findings._
  * _A basic history of HYDRA's growth and reach, from pre-WWII to now_
  * _Essentially, either through links to other public pages (I've checked out most of them and they're all well-researched and credible), or through posting the content directly on the site,_ HERACLES  _has organised an archive of_ all  _publicly available knowledge about HYDRA, and the Wyvern, in one place. Members, victims, motives, activities, you name it._
  * _An entire section of the website is dedicated to support groups, specialized counselling, and information services, organised by local areas across the_ globe.  _(There's a link to this blog on there as well)._
  * _HERACLES' information page is pretty clear about what it offers, but I'm going to directly copy and paste one of the more striking points:_ " _This resource site will publish any and all information about HYDRA activities revealed in the United States V. Stark criminal case as soon as the court deems it publicly available._ "



_This is everything we've been asking for and trying to achieve on our own, survivors. We just haven't had the resources. But it's clear that Margaret Stark has them: the site is user-friendly and well organised – no longer do we have to trawl through pages of senate hearing documents, or terabytes of garbled data. It's been organised for us by an assassin turned archivist._

_The processing power of the website is also remarkable – I suppose we have Tony Stark's world-famous servers to thank for that. It seems that he and at least one other Avenger, the Vision, have been involved in the making of this archive. Indeed, the Avengers put out a press briefing an hour ago directing people to the resource._

_The website indicates that government, intelligence, and law enforcement organisations are invited to contribute to the archive. It also invites research organisations and academic publications to peer-review the resource._

_It's by no means complete, and the site makes that clear – HERACLES has complied with what the US Government and the U.N. have decided is publicly available. It's also clear that HERACLES is planning to expand._

_I'm overwhelmed by this sudden wealth of knowledge after almost three years of fumbling in the dark. I'm grateful to Ms Stark, but also cautious – we have yet to see how her trial turns out, so I'm going to hold off judgement for now. We can only hope that when her trial ends, no matter the outcome, Ms Stark stands by her commitment to sharing everything she knows._

_I'll end this post by addressing the title of the archive:_ HERACLES.  _On the information page, we find out that the title is actually an acronym: HYDRA Evidence, Research, and Analysis Compendium: Linking Education and Support. That's what the website does, so that's what's on the tin._

_And let's not forget who Heracles was, in Greek mythology. The son of Zeus and the greatest of Greek heroes, certainly. Also famous for completing twelve impossible labors._

_The second of those labors? Slaying the Hydra._

_Heracles cut off each of the Hydra's heads and, before they could grow back, cauterized them with a firebrand. The website is clearly aware of the heavy symbolism._

_HYDRA was fond of its tagline: Cut off one head, two more shall take its place._

_At the top of the webpage, under the bold letters of HERACLES, you'll find a new tagline: 'No More Shall Take Its Place'._

_Head on over to HERACLES, fellow survivors, I hope you find your answers. If you don't, watch that space: HERACLES is a work in progress. HYDRA won't be finished until each bloody stump is brought into the light and burned away._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a few things to say at this point. Firstly: Good lord, it took me so long to come up with an acronym for Heracles! (Thank you to Travelilah for the wonderful idea). I was originally going to call the website IOLAUS, after Heracles's cousin who came up with the idea for cauterising the heads, but that one was way too hard.
> 
> Secondly: I am not a lawyer! I've done research on the US federal criminal trial system for this fic, but I didn't exactly pass the bar exam. So given that there's going to be a fair bit of hand-wavey legal stuff coming up, please bear with me. I'm doing my best to make this as genuine and believable as possible. If you see anything that doesn't look right, then let me know and I can fix it up.
> 
> Thirdly: I got the idea for this segment of the Wyvern from the AO3 fanfic "United States v. Barnes, 617 F. Supp. 2d 143 (D.D.C. 2015)" by fallingvoices and radialarch – I've taken some cues from their format/general premise, though I promise that all the work here is my own! But definitely go check out United States v. Barnes if you like this arc and want to read something similar. Here's the link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304905/chapters/5071058
> 
> Lastly: Anyone catch the Daredevil reference? I was really tempted to have Murdock & Nelson as Maggie's attorneys, but it wouldn't work with the MCU timeline as I'm pretty sure at this point Matt is thought to be dead/definitely not a practicing lawyer. Also I have my own ideas for Maggie's lawyers. I may have a few more Daredevil references later on though.
> 
> That being said, happy reading!


	59. Chapter 59

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter we hit 100 subscriptions! You guys are all amazing and I appreciate every kudos, every comment, every subscription and bookmark. It makes me so happy that you enjoy reading this story. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

The discovery process lasted weeks. Normally discovery for a trial of this magnitude might take far longer, but there was a lot of political and public pressure for it to go quickly. This meant that both the prosecution and Maggie's defense team were down to the wire.

In fact it turned out that Maggie's team was behind. In one of her near-daily meetings with Kemp and Martinez at an office in the courthouse (she couldn't visit them in their law firm offices because of her bail conditions), Martinez made a face as they reviewed the documents they were going over.

"They've been building a case against you for months," he said, putting down one of the many folders of documents the prosecution had swamped them with.

Maggie blinked and looked up. "They have?"

He waved another folder at her. "You don't just have this much evidence and witness reports lying around against someone you're not planning to take to trial."

She blinked again, and then looked around at the pile of documents on the table. She knew this was only a fraction of the evidence the prosecution had turned over to the defense – the rest was at the Kemp & Martinez law firm. She felt like she'd swallowed a stone.  _This was Ross's plan all along_ , she realized.  _The second I wasn't useful any more, this was waiting for me_.

She scowled and squared her shoulders. "You wanted to talk about finding witnesses?"

 

* * *

 

20th October, 2016  
 _The Daily Bugle_  News Alert

_PROSECUTOR IN STARK CASE WON'T SEEK DEATH PENALTY_

_Prosecutors in the Margaret Stark case today announced that they would not be seeking the death penalty, instead pushing for life without parole._

_Legal experts have called it a smart move, explaining that juries are less likely to convict when the death sentence is on the table, particularly against a woman._

_However, there has been widespread criticism of the decision. Senator Bill Wallace stated "at the end of the day, the prosecution has shown themselves for the cowards they are. Ms Stark represents a grave threat to the American people, more than deserving of the highest punishment for her crimes, and they're apparently comfortable with letting her live on the taxpayer's money in comfort for the rest of her life."_

_Ms Stark is charged with over thirty counts of murder, along with espionage and treason, each count of which is punishable by death under Title 18 of the United States Code._

 

* * *

 

Maggie did everything she could to help Kemp and Martinez, but ultimately this was what they were good at – reviewing legal documents, researching and tracking down witnesses. She knew they were having trouble with that last one: there wasn't anyone left alive that they knew of from her time in Canada, and there weren't many HYDRA agents currently still alive and available for questioning. The prosecution had gathered more than enough witnesses to her many crimes, but the defense didn't have a lot to show that she'd been controlled.

At one point, Kemp and Diego approached Maggie and asked if there was any possibility of getting Captain Rogers', Natasha Romanov's and Sam Wilson's impressions of her as a combatant for HYDRA, even as written testimony. Maggie had just spread her hands and said "Sorry, that's not gonna happen."

They worked with what they had though, and Maggie couldn't help but be impressed with them. Martinez was empathetic and personable, strangely warm for someone in his profession. When he got frustrated he muttered Spanish curses under his breath, and after a few instances of this Maggie muttered back in kind. Just like that, they formed a bond – he stayed behind a few minutes after their meetings to talk in Spanish or English, chatting about a book they'd both read, or about Martinez's wife and four daughters, or about the courthouse's arbitrary air conditioning system. Soon enough they were on a first name basis.

It took Maggie a while but she eventually realized that Martinez – Diego – hid a deadly sharp intelligence behind his personable exterior, that he used to devastating effect. She almost couldn't wait to see him in court.

Kemp didn't hide her skills. She was a straight up, no-nonsense, determined legal genius. She had a great head for names, figures, and facts, and she had a way of looking at people with her sharp eyes that made them feel like she knew every one of their secrets. She didn't chat about her family, but she showed Maggie every day that she'd do everything she could to fight for her.

 

Their hardest conversation was early on in discovery: "Is there anything else you haven't told us?"

Maggie had been drained after hours of going over victims, crimes, and traumas, so she almost said no. But then she realized she hadn't told them about Bucky.

So she did: first she told them how the Winter Soldier had killed her parents and kidnapped her, and then explained her relationship with Bucky after escaping from HYDRA. Kemp and Diego looked at her without judgement, though Kemp looked a little pale, and when she finished they agreed that the information was very unlikely to feature in the trial – the prosecution had no way to know either of those facts and they weren't relevant to what Maggie had been charged with. It made Maggie uncomfortable, but this trial was going to be hard enough without bringing Bucky into it. She'd tell the truth about the Winter Soldier and the crimes she'd committed by his side, but she'd protect Bucky Barnes.

After that grueling conversation Kemp steepled her fingers and asked: "Any chance of getting Sergeant Barnes as a witness?" Her all-seeing eyes focused on Maggie, razor sharp.

Maggie blinked. "What? No, he's on the run. I have no idea where he is. Even if he showed up and offered, I'd say no."

Kemp and Diego shared an exasperated look, but they'd learned by now how stubborn Maggie could be.

They ended the meeting, and agreed to meet up the next day to go over the HYDRA data. After all, Maggie wasn't just their defendant – she was by now one of the leading experts on HYDRA: their members, their crimes, the way they operated. When she wasn't helping her lawyers, she was working on HERACLES with Vision, F.R.I.D.A.Y. and Tony. Kemp once grumbled that HERACLES was just a much a resource for the prosecution as for the public, but Maggie just shrugged at her.

 

Public and media scrutiny dimmed a little throughout the discovery process, but it never went away. Not even close. Any scrap of evidence or information about a witness got scrutinized in intense detail in the public eye. Doctors, politicians, legal experts and members of law enforcement with absolutely no connection to the trial were sought out for their opinion.

Maggie had to be careful in the public areas of the Avengers Facility, because there was a near constant press presence there now. At the courthouse she held the bathroom door open for a lady who later had a tell-all interview with a local television station.

The scrutiny exhausted her, but she had some of the best people to support her: a former-playboy billionaire with his own share of press appearances, an expert in public relations and the media, a stone-faced Air Force colonel who stood by her side whenever he could to glare off reporters, and an omnipresent android who could analyse her media presence in a heartbeat and give her comforting (or sometimes not-so-comforting) statistics.

 

* * *

 

14th October 2016  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Maggie stood by the window of a small courthouse meeting room, looking out at the sun glinting on the windows of Manhattan. Not that she could see much of Manhattan itself – she was in an office on the south side of the building, so she had a prime view of the Brooklyn Bridge stretching across the east river, its faded stone bathed in morning light.

Maggie was alone in the meeting room, though she knew there were three guards standing outside the door. She wore a midnight blue business dress, but she felt uncomfortable in it – she'd only ever worn such things as disguises when she was in HYDRA, or when she was on the run. The expensive cloth felt stiff against her skin, and she kept tugging at her collar.

She was waiting for Diego and Kemp to show up – it had only been a week since she'd been released on bail and she was still helping them trawl through all the data. She'd already been here twenty minutes, and they'd never been later than ten minutes before.

Almost as soon as she had the thought, the door opened. She turned around, lips already lifting in a smile, but when she saw two strangers at the door her smile fell.

Her initial read on them was: early-fifties Caucasian woman, non-threatening; and mid-forties African-American man, physically strong, military training.

But that gut assessment only lasted a second, because in the next second she picked up on inconsistencies in their appearance and then searched their faces – only to realize that she recognized their eyes.

The early-fifties Caucasian woman wore a padded suit in an old-fashioned style to make her look heavier and older, and a grey wig. Whoever had done her makeup was skillful, but Maggie knew what fake crow's feet and skin discoloration looked like. She also knew that if she took off that wig she'd find red hair, and that under those blue contacts were eyes as green as emeralds.

Maggie's mouth dropped open, and she turned to the man. His must be a wig as well, thicker and streaked with silver strands, and she spotted makeup aging his face, too. He stood tall in a blue suit, but Maggie knew that half-quirked mouth and warm eyes.  _Sam._

Her mouth hung open but she couldn't speak, only stare at them as they stood in the doorway. Her hands fell loose at her sides. She distantly wondered where her guards were.

Natasha's eyes glinted. "Stark," she murmured.

Still half-stunned, Maggie felt a rush of satisfaction – this was someone who'd known her as the Wyvern, who'd been afraid of her, now calling her by her real name. The surprise of it gave her enough of a jolt to be able to speak again.

She nodded. "Romanoff."

Natasha gave her a quick smile, then said "you have ten minutes," stepped outside, and shut the door behind her.

Maggie's eyes flicked to Sam, who stared right back at her with a smile playing at his mouth. She opened her mouth to say hi, but she suddenly had an awful thought about why Natasha and Sam might have taken the risk of sneaking into a courthouse to speak to her.

The blood drained from her face. "Bucky," she breathed, hand fumbling at the windowsill behind her to steady herself.

Sam blinked at her numb, horrified tone, and his hands suddenly flew up. "No, no, Barnes is fine!"

Maggie let out a long breath and sank into the nearest chair, reaching up with a trembling hand to cover her eyes. She willed her heart to stop racing. "Dammit, Sam, what did you  _think_ I would think?" she said, the fading edges of panic making the words harsher than she meant them.

"I'm sorry, really." She heard him move further into the room. "Barnes is… well, he's actually…"

She looked up, eyes narrowing at the hesitance in his voice. "What?"

He grimaced, then reached up to scratch at his wig. "He asked to go back into cryostasis until a cure for the trigger words is found."

There was a beat of silence.

Then Maggie spoke, her voice low and icy. " _What_."

Sam took a step back. "He said he didn't want to be dangerous anymore," he said carefully. "He's in a safe place, and we've got people working on the triggers-"

"You let him do this?  _Steve_ let him do this?" She snapped back, jumping to her feet. "I thought he was going to be  _safe_!"

"He is safe, Maggie-"

"He's  _frozen in a glass box,_ Sam!" She gripped the table so hard that it creaked under her fingers, and a familiar helpless rage scorched through her chest. "He's not anything. He's, he's…" a rush of emotion hit her, and she fell back into her seat. She covered her mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling all at once like she was on the edge of a panic attack.

She'd thought he was safe, healing somewhere, but apparently he'd been frozen all this time. She thought of all the times he'd been dragged away at the end of a mission to be put on ice, and remembered the way he'd once stared at her with his stormy blue eyes as the glass closed over his face. A sob bubbled up her throat at the memory, and she hunched over.

She heard Sam's voice: "Okay, I'm going to touch you, is that alright?"

She nodded, eyes still squeezed shut, and Sam took her free hand. His skin was warm, and it jolted her. Her hand, which she hadn't realized had been clenched into a fist, uncurled. She took a deep breath.

"It's okay, Maggie," Sam murmured, and the chair next to her creaked as he sat in it. "I'm sorry for upsetting you. I get why you don't agree with his decision, and you have every right to be angry. But I promise you that we have the best minds working on getting him out and healed as soon as possible, and that he's in a safe place in the meantime. That's actually part of why I'm here."

That got her attention. She sniffed and looked up. Sam squeezed her hand and leveled his gaze at her, silently asking if she was ready to get to the point, and she nodded.

"Okay," he said. "First thing's first – I'm here to offer you an out. Right now, today, we can get you out of that handcuff, out of this courthouse and in Bolivia by the end of the day. Interested?" He cocked an eyebrow at her.

She smiled, wiping her eyes. "I think you already know what I'm going to say to that."

He sighed. "I figured, what with the press conference and everything, but the offer's there if you want to take it. We're getting pretty good at being on the run."

"Wonder what that's like," she replied with a bland smile, and he rolled his eyes at her.

"Yeah alright, snippy. We just don't want you in jail. Steve told me to like, triple check that you were sure you wanted to stay, but with the way Tony looks at you these days I figure it's not just us looking out for you."

Maggie smiled again. "Let's just say you're not the only one to offer an out. I appreciate it, but no thank you. Where is Steve, anyway?"

"I don't really know. He can't exactly sneak into a New York courthouse as easily as Nat and I, all the makeup in the world couldn't hide those shoulders."

"Fair. Oh, and… hi," she said, belatedly realizing she hadn't actually said hello, just freaked out about Bucky.

He grinned. "Hi. It's good to see you. Though I've been seeing a lot more of you than you have of me, lately." He frowned. "That sounded less creepy in my head."

"No, I get it," she said, grinning back at him. "I figure that as an international fugitive your media presence isn't as big as mine right now." She shrugged. "It's good to see you, too. Old man and all." She pulled him in for a hug, and smiled when he returned it. When they pulled apart, she sighed. "I really want to catch up and ask how all of you are, but Natasha said ten minutes, right?"

He grimaced. "Right. So the second reason I'm here…" he sighed. "We didn't want to do this, but it's looking like our best option right now-"

"Just tell me."

He winced. "Okay, so… I don't know if Tony's told you yet, but Steve, Nat, and I were there with him when we busted the HYDRA base in… in Québec."

Maggie's face fell. "Oh."

"Yeah. So we know that there's a whole cache of data about how they… how you were…"

"How I was made," she finished flatly.

"Right," he agreed, his voice soft. "We were there when Tony found that data, and we heard him give JARVIS the command to lock it away from everyone, save for you. And the people who are working on Barnes's trigger words, they think that data could be the key to helping him. And you."

She let out a long, low breath, and distantly noticed that the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. "Who is it?" she asked. Sam hesitated, so she continued: "Who's helping Bucky? Do they have a lab? What are their qualifications? What are they going to do with the data?" She knew she was bordering on rambling, but she could hear Tony's low, disturbed voice:  _there were… videos. Experiments. Training._

Sam sighed. "I can't tell you much, but I can tell you that the person I'm going to give the data to has yours and Barnes's best interests at heart. And she's crazy smart."

Maggie bit her lip. "And this person… she thinks she can find a way to fix us?"

He nodded, meeting her eyes to show her that he meant it.

She looked down at her folded hands. The thought of opening that Pandora's box terrified her, but she trusted Sam. She trusted Steve too, though he wasn't here, and she knew he was behind this – he wouldn't let Bucky lie frozen in a box without doing something about it. And the thought of getting rid of the trigger words for good…

She took a deep breath through the nose. "Okay," she breathed, and Sam's face softened. "Do… do they want everything?" She cursed the way her voice went high and vulnerable at the end, but Sam didn't judge. He just reached out and took her hand again.

"Everything relating to the trigger words, and the psychological conditioning," he said. "They'll purge anything that's not relevant from their servers, and get rid of all of it once they've finished using it. Steve told me to give you his word that he'd make sure that data only stays with the people who need to see it to help Bucky."

Steve's earnestness was palpable even second-hand. She sighed. "Alright, I'm in. How are we doing this, then? I'll need time to get the data, and you might have noticed but I tend to be heavily guarded. I won't be able to sneak out and meet up with you."

"We've got that covered," he said, reaching into his pocket. When he opened his palm, Maggie frowned down at what looked like a dark metal bead inscribed with a circular symbol. She glanced back up at Sam, who shrugged.

"I don't know how it works. They just told me to tell you that when you get access to the data, place this bead on the hard drive, it'll scan it and send the data to where it needs to be. When the bead flashes purple, touch the symbol on the side and it'll self-destruct."

"Like  _Mission Impossible_?" She saw that one a few weeks ago with Rhodey.

He laughed. "That's what I asked, but apparently not. Your fingers are safe."

She picked the bead up and squinted at it. It was surprisingly heavy, and didn't feel like any metal she knew. An inkling of where it might have come from struck her.

"Sam, I know you don't know a lot about this thing, but I want you to be aware that I have many questions about how and why it works."

"Noted," he replied with a grin. "But please don't try to run experiments or anything on it, it's a one-time deal and this makeup is a nightmare on my skin, I don't want to wear it again to bring you another bead."

"Alright. I'll hold off out of respect for your skincare routine."

"Much appreciated."

Maggie tucked the bead into her pocket. "You guys are helping, right?"

He frowned, pausing in the middle of adjusting his suit. "Yeah, that's why I'm here."

"No, I mean…" she gestured vaguely. "With the world. Those rumors of people shutting down human trafficking rings, taking down terrorists… that's you guys, right?"

He froze. "You've heard about that?"

"Doesn't matter," she said, waving a hand. "You tell Steve to keep doing what he's doing. There are only three official Avengers right now, and they can use all the help they can get."

He broke out in another grin. "Yes, ma'am."

"And tell him…" she bit her lip. "Tell him that when Tony needs him, he'll call."

"Okay."

"And also tell him I don't blame him for Bucky going into cryo, I know Bucky's a stubborn ass and he'd have done it one way or another."

Sam's grin widened. "I agree with you on that one."

At that moment the door clicked open and Natasha slipped in. She eyed the both of them at the table and murmured: "lawyers are on their way up, we gotta go."

Maggie stood and watched them crank open the window as they swiftly arranged climbing gear. They worked well together, exchanging ropes and carabiners without a word.

"Stay safe," she said, as Natasha slung her legs out the window. The other woman looked over her shoulder, eyes warming for just a moment.

"No promises." She cocked her head. "Don't go to prison."

"No promises," Maggie smiled, but then a thought hit her. "When Bucky wakes up, tell him…" Natasha and Sam both looked back at her as she hesitated, uncertain about whether Bucky would be waking up any time soon, and what she should say. She settled on: "Tell him my mission's not over."

Natasha jumped out the window, but Sam was used to ending conversations like a normal person. "We will, Maggie. Stay safe, good luck in court. If you need anything, Tony's got that direct line to Steve, so give us a call."

"I will. Don't love that it's a flip phone, though."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Don't even get me started." And with that he jumped off the windowsill after Natasha.

Maggie closed the window just as the door opened behind her once more. She turned, smiling, as Diego and Kemp entered.

"Hello, Maggie," Diego said, juggling his briefcase and coat as he shot her a warm smile. "How are you?"

Her fingers brushed the bump in her pocket where the strange bead lay. "I'm well, thanks. I've got good people looking out for me."

 

* * *

 

When she got back to the Avengers Facility that afternoon, she asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. where Vision was, then made a beeline for the Avengers operations room. She wasn't allowed in there, but she knocked and told the agent who answered who she was looking for. When the agent stepped away from the door to call to Vision, Maggie caught a glimpse of a screen inside the operations room, and the three letters displayed on it:  _A.I.M._

She frowned and leaned to get a better look, but then Vision's body filled the doorway. "Maggie," he said. "How was your meeting with your lawyers?"

She smoothed her frown away and shrugged. "Alright. Listen, I need you to do me a favor."

He closed the operations room door behind him. "Certainly."

"Three months ago, you said that whenever I was ready to look at the Québec data, all I had to do was ask." She took a deep breath. "I'm asking."

His brow pinched. "Are you sure, Maggie?"

She lifted her chin. "Absolutely."

 

* * *

 

"Okay." Maggie bounced on the balls of her feet and shook her fingers, hoping that the boost of adrenaline would give her the courage to do this. "Okay, this is fine. You already lived it, it's over. This is just data. Lines of code, zeroes and ones."

She'd locked herself in the workshop. Vision had pricked her finger for a sample of DNA to unlock the digital lock-box, then uploaded the data onto a Stark tablet isolated from the wider mainframe. Then at Maggie's request, he'd left her alone with the tablet.

It currently lay on the main workbench, while Maggie psyched herself up to look at it. She could just drop the metal bead on it and call it a day, but she didn't want to send off all that data without checking what it was first – she remembered lots of horrible things being done to her, or done  _by_  her, and it wasn't all relevant to the trigger words.

She supposed she should have spoken to Dr Nguyen about this first, but she didn't want to implicate the woman in the very illegal activity of communicating with infamous fugitives. This was on Maggie, and she'd deal with the fallout.

As her thoughts wandered, she heard a ghost of a voice echo from the far reaches of her mind:  _Verre. Transmission. Affamé-_

A full-body shudder ran through her, and she shook her head.

_Just get it over with._

She marched toward the workbench, her face set, and turned on the tablet. It wanted fingerprint verification, and when that was done she looked with bated breath at… a table of contents. The data appeared to be organised by date and subject matter. At the very top of the screen, a greeting blinked into existence:  
_Welcome, Ms Stark._

Maggie smiled despite herself. She doubted Tony would have thought to include a greeting for the sister he didn't even know at that point, so this must have been JARVIS's idea. She'd never 'met' the A.I., but she found herself glad for the irrational kindness of the greeting.

"Thank you, Mr JARVIS," she whispered, thoughts of a tall, silver haired butler in her mind, and then clicked on the first entry.

 

* * *

 

Tony found her later, after her hours of reading through the patchy, corrupted data about the Wyvern Program, about the things that had been done to her and the things she had done. After she had read the Progress Reports and clinical notes signed  _Project Leader,_ or  _Chief Scientist Sanders._ After she had read the notes and data about how they'd twisted her mind, wiped her over and over and bent her to their will.

After she had watched the videos of a younger version of herself beating men to the ground, the videos of Marino and the others digging away at her exposed bones, complete with the audio of her senseless screams. After she had seen the scans of her heartbreakingly small body, made strong with metal. After she'd seen the still of herself in the chair, twelve years old and screaming.

After she'd placed the metal bead on the Stark tablet with shaking hands, and watched it glow purple. After she'd touched the illuminated circular symbol and watched the bead vaporize into thin air.

Tony found her in the workshop after all this and stopped in the doorway, staring at her.

Maggie lay on the workbench, her legs dangling off the end, as she drank a clear liquid out of a beaker with a green straw. His eyes flicked from the beaker, to her eyes fixed on the ceiling, to the IV stand next to the workshop. He followed the line of the IV to the needle pressed into the crook of her elbow.

Tony's eyes widened, and his focus widened to the chaos around her – there were beakers, vials, tubes, and filtration systems strewn across the workspaces around her, some still bubbling with unidentified liquids. Dum-E and U rolled cautiously around the mess, occasionally gently prodding Maggie with their rubber grips, as if checking on her. A slow jazz song crooned from the workshop speakers.

Maggie somehow sensed him standing in the doorway.

"Do you know what I've been doing for the last three hours?" she asked, still looking at the ceiling.

Tony ran an eye over the mess once more. "Vision told me–"

"I have been  _inventing_ ," she cut in, lifting the beaker with the green straw in it. She got one arm under herself and used it to push up to a sitting position on the workbench. She wobbled slightly, sloshing the liquid in the glass, and Tony's eyebrows shot up. He began hesitantly pacing toward her.

Maggie eyed the beaker, then pulled it to her chin to take another sip from the straw. "I finished going through the electronic vault," she said, enunciating her words carefully. "And then I thought: 'if my metabolism runs four times faster than the average human's, why couldn't I just distill a solution that has five times the normal amount of alcohol in it?'" She took another sip, as Tony's eyes got rounder and rounder. "It was difficult, and I had to formulate a drug that would slow down my kidney function at the same time" – she lifted her arm with the IV in it – "but I made it work."

Tony blinked, and looked from the empty beakers strewn around the workshop to his sister sitting on the bench. She was usually so well-balanced, like an athlete, but now she tilted from side to side like a sailor on deck. Her hair was strewn across her sweaty forehead, and when she reached behind her back for another beaker full of clear liquid, he noticed that her eyes were glassy.

"You're drunk," he said, rather unnecessarily.

Maggie nodded decisively and tossed her empty beaker at the workshop wall. It exploded on impact and rained down on a pre-existing pile of glass on the floor. " _Yes_ ," she said. "Today is the first time I have  _ever_ been drunk. I can see the appeal." She spotted Tony still staring at the pile of broken glass, and squinted. "I'll clean that up."

"It's like having a freaking Asgardian living in the place again," Tony grumbled to himself as he picked his way across the workshop. He stepped over a titration setup, his nose wrinkling at the sharp tang of alcohol in the air, then boosted himself onto the bench beside Maggie. She was busy poking a straw into her new beaker, and he watched her miss the opening three times before she finally got it in. She took a sip and then tilted her head to look at him with bleary eyes.

He rested his elbows on his knees. "You're not about to die of alcohol poisoning, are you?"

She snorted. "Of course not, I did all the calculations" – she waved a hand dramatically, and a holographic screen of formulas and equations appeared in midair – "and my math is excellent. I did it all while sober, too," she added, as if he ought to be impressed.

"Huh." He peered at her beaker. "Can I try that?"

She looked from him, to the beaker, and back again. "I dunno if that's a good idea," she said, but handed it over. "Don't do what I did with the whiskey."

He sniffed the beaker and could swear that he singed off some nose hairs. But he'd never been known for his good decision making, so he took a tentative sip. Immediately he gagged and spat out the solution, tears springing to his eyes as he shoved the beaker back at Maggie.

"Jesus Christ, Maggot," he said, gasping for air, "that's not alcohol, that's poison."

She shrugged and took another sip. Tony shook his head, feeling a little overwhelmed at the alcohol-thick air. It was like sitting in a distillery.

When he'd gotten over the shock of putting what tasted like aviation fuel in his mouth, he leaned back and watched Maggie drink. She was hunched over, staring into the beaker, still swaying slightly. Her eyes were distant.

He sighed. "It was bad, huh?"

"You've seen it," she whispered. "How did you deal with that?"

"Blew up an island," he replied. "Then… yeah, I did some drinking."

"Great minds," she said with a low chuckle, and toasted him. When she realized he didn't have a glass to clink against hers, she frowned and then gently knocked the beaker against his forehead. He raised his eyebrows at her but didn't complain.

After a long moment of silence, he murmured: "You shouldn't have had to do that alone."

She shrugged.

Tony sighed, and kicked his heels against the workbench legs. "Look," he began. "I'm… obviously not a great role model, for lots of reasons-"

"Not true!" she protested, head snapping up. Then she winced at how loudly she'd spoken and pressed her lips together.

" _Anyway_ ," he said, "I'm not used to being… you know, role-model-esque, but… I kinda feel like I've got some wisdom to impart here."

"I absolutely cannot guarantee you that I'll remember it, but go ahead." She shuffled around so she was mostly facing him, nearly falling off the bench in the process.

"Right, uh… well, I've been partial to a drink or two, you might have read about it in the news. Hell, you probably remember from when you were a kid." That hit him hard, realizing that this had been a thirty-year problem. He reflected on that for a second, then shook his head and continued. "And honestly, I can't remember a single time I felt good about myself when I used alcohol to forget, or to smother up whatever shit was happening in my life at the time. I think most people agree that alcoholism is bad, but… take it from a guy who's been there." He shrugged, avoiding her eyes.

Her head settled on his shoulder, surprising him, then he wrinkled his nose at the alcohol fumes.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I'm not doing this as like, a revolutionary new life plan. It's too much effort to do all this every time, and I really hated putting the needle in. But what I saw in that vault… it  _scared_ me, Tony. And I wanted to try something normal for once."

He sighed and propped his head against hers. He noticed she'd put away the beaker. "Well if Thor ever comes back, get him to give you some of his Asgardian mead, that worked on Ste–" he cut himself off, then grit his teeth and continued. "It got Steve drunk."

Maggie laughed tiredly into his shoulder. "I'd like to see that," she said, then lifted her head. She climbed carefully off the bench. "Maybe I will one day."

Tony helped her down, ignoring the way his heart clenched at her words. He helped her pull out the IV line, and held her hair back for her when she threw up in the trash bin. He nursed her through her hour-long hangover, plying her with water and food. She was sober by night time, so he walked her back to her room and gave her a long, squeezing hug before she went to bed.

 

* * *

 

Research Facility, Wakanda

Thousands of miles away, four people gathered around a glowing holographic display of a recent transmission.

"You didn't mention Wakanda while you were there, did you?" asked Princess Shuri, frowning at a secondary message that had been sent with the data.

"No, why?" asked Sam, glancing at Natasha.

The young genius pointed to the message:  _Ndiyabulela._ She raised her eyebrows at her guests.

"N-diya.. bulela?" Steve read aloud. "What does that mean?"

Shuri frowned. "It means thank you. In  _Wakandan._ "

Comprehension crossed their faces, and Sam reached up to pinch his nose. "That woman is going to give me an aneurysm," he groaned.

"This won't be a problem, your highness," Natasha said, her face and voice calm. "Maggie knows to keep this to herself."

Shuri eyed Natasha, then the single Wakandan word. "Alright," she said, with a shrug. "My brother won't be happy, but he has a guilt complex about that woman so that should help. I'll get started right away, though I should warn you that this may not be a quick process."

"Thank you," Steve said earnestly. "We'll get out of your hair. Oh and your highness–" she'd already started scrolling through the transmission again, but she looked up. "Be careful, going through that data. It's not easy reading. Or watching." A shadow crossed his face, and behind him Natasha's eyes darkened.

Shuri inclined her head. "I am prepared, Captain." The sobriety to her gaze was quickly chased away by a glint of mischief. " _Ndiyabulela._ "


	60. Chapter 60

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here begins the first of two LONGASS CHAPTERS. I decided not to break them up because I love you guys and want to give you as much story as I can!
> 
> Yay for 450 faves!
> 
> I seriously have the best readers, you guys. Not only did ff.net's thenumbertwentyseven help me clear up some flow issues last chapter (thank you so much again lovely, I really appreciate it), but tx_ladyj did a beautiful "The Wyvern" themed BUJO reading tracker (check it out here: http://txladyj-blog.tumblr.com/post/180520356149/im-a-fan-fiction-reader-and-a-bujo-addict-i-had if you're into BUJO, friends).
> 
> AND, last but NOT LEAST, the lovely lovely RedVixen named her REAL LIFE ACTUAL KITTEN "Wyvern"! I am so excited! Welcome to the world Wyvern, I love you!
> 
> Aaaand a little warning for swearing in this first scene.

15th October, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

The next day, Tony waited for Maggie outside her cell.

"Jesus Christ," she gasped when the door opened to reveal him just standing there, staring at the ground. "Do you want me to punch you through a wall? You scared the shit out of me!"

He glanced up, looking guilty, but didn't apologize.

Maggie stepped out of the doorway and let the door close behind her. "What is it?"

"Why did you open the digital lock-box yesterday?"

She reached down to adjust her collar, giving herself a moment to compose her face. "I felt like I was ready. And I wanted to see if there was anything in there about my trigger words." Not technically a lie. "Why?"

He winced. "See… I thought you did it to pass on the data to your lawyers."

"Tony. What did you do."

He held up his hands and took a step back. "Okay, so I might have mentioned something about how there was a whole vault of HYDRA data spanning a decade, all to do with how you were controlled. And then Kemp and Martinez lost their shit because apparently that sounds like something that would be really useful in trial, and I lost  _my_ shit because apparently they didn't know about it mfmmm-" Tony's words died away as Maggie reached up and put her hand over his mouth. Holding back his words, she bowed her head for a moment and closed her eyes.

"Dammit," she muttered. She'd known she would have to mention the lock-box to her lawyers sooner rather than later, but the words and images were still fresh in her mind and the idea of sharing it all… bile rose in her throat, and she had to swallow it back.

She opened her eyes. "Okay," she said, and released Tony's mouth. "Okay. They're here?"

He grimaced. "Yeah, they drove up as soon as they heard."

"Alright. Let's do this."

 

* * *

 

"Maggie, this data would be  _crucial_ for your trial."

Maggie sat at a conference table with her lawyers, Tony, and Vision. She glared at the dark wooden surface, her fingers tapping a restless beat against her thigh.

"Is it even relevant?" She asked. "It's barely got anything relating to the missions HYDRA made me go on, or the people I hurt." She knew she was fighting a losing battle, but she couldn't help but push back. This was the deepest core of her trauma, a dark pit of pain and nightmares. They were asking for it like it was just another folder full of paper to add to their piles.

Kemp opened her mouth, but Vision held up one hand and leaned forward. "Maggie," he murmured in a gentle voice. She looked up, fingers suddenly shaking. "That data is full of explicit proof that you were enhanced and controlled against your will, as a  _child_ , at the hands of sadistic scientists and ex-soviet agents." Maggie's lip quivered, and she firmly shut it down. Vision held her gaze. "I know it might not be relevant to what you want from this trial, helping the other victims of HYDRA, but it  _is_  relevant to the people trying to prove your innocence."

Maggie's gaze dropped to her hands, trembling in her lap. "I know," she whispered. Everyone else in the room leaned forward to catch her words. "But I'm  _terrified._ "

" _Por supuesto que lo estás,_ " [ _"Of course you are,"_ ] Diego said in a low voice, making her glance up again. His face was creased with tiredness – they'd been working non-stop – and his eyes shone with warmth. She could see that he didn't want to cause her pain, but that he wanted her to do this. "This isn't right," he continued, "it's not fair to make you relive the things you went through, let alone in a criminal court. And I'm sorry, but you  _must_." He held her gaze. "If not for yourself, then for the truth. The men and women who are going to decide your fate deserve the whole, unbiased truth. If we keep evidence from them, then we're no different than the people who want these truths to stay in the dark."

Maggie let out a shuddering breath and dropped her face into her hands. Tony's hand hovered over her shoulder – she felt the warmth of his skin through her shirt – but he eventually pulled it away.

In the darkness of her hands Maggie thought about the photograph of herself in the data, the only one where her face was visible. She'd been in the chair, and her mouth was wide in a scream, her eyes screwed up. A  _child._

Maggie felt oddly protective of the child she had been, as if by keeping the data to herself she could save her younger self from more pain. The ghost of that child flickered behind her eyes, in silent agony for eternity.

Reading those files and watching the videos had brought years-old memories back to the fore, cutting into her heart like barbed wire. She needed months, realistically, to deal with this. But the court system wouldn't wait for her mental health.

After a long minute, Maggie lifted her face out of her hands. She let out a long sigh.

"I'm going to need so much therapy for this," she muttered, then pulled up the back of her shirt and revealed the Stark tablet she'd snuck into the meeting. She placed it on the middle of the table like a shiny black omen.

Diego reached across the table, bypassing the tablet to leave his palm open in front of her. Maggie rested her hand on his. "We don't take this lightly, Maggie," he murmured. " _Gracias._ "

 

In compliance with reciprocal discovery laws, Maggie's lawyers handed over the entire electronic cache of data to the prosecution the next day. The prosecution didn't respond at all, and Maggie didn't sleep that night – she was too busy throwing up in her toilet while Vision sat beside her and distracted her with funny stories from the internet.

 

* * *

 

Late October, 2016

"We've been offered a plea deal."

Maggie sucked in a breath. She knew Diego and Kemp had been negotiating with the prosecution but the prospect of finally reaching an agreement was a shock. After handing over the Québec data and reliving most of her traumatic memories she was tempted to put an end to all of this now and never see a trial.

She didn't think she could speak right now, but luckily she wasn't alone – Pepper and Tony sat on either side of her, and Pepper folded her hands in front of her.

"What are the terms?"

Kemp handed over a very official-looking document with the United States Attorney's Office seal at the top. "Thirty years in prison," she said bluntly.

Maggie sensed Tony bristle beside her. "Thirty years? What kind of a deal–"

"It's the lowest we could bargain them to, given the charges," Diego cut in, his face grim. "They're willing to strike off the terrorism charges, but they're not budging on the murders. They want to settle this out of court to avoid an expensive and potentially ugly trial – getting into detail about what HYDRA did doesn't look good for the government – but they've got a lot of people watching this case. They can't afford to be seen as weak."

Kemp gestured to the plea deal document, which Pepper scanned with a keen eye. "We might be able to knock a few months off the sentence but they're not going to go much lower than that. We're obligated to present this deal to you," she said, her lips pursed.

Maggie eyed the other woman. "But you don't think I should take it."

Diego sighed and turned to look at his partner. "Andrea–"

"I didn't say anything," Kemp replied, raising her hands.

He glanced back at Maggie. "This is your decision, Maggie. Thirty years is a long time, but if we go to trial and you're found guilty it'll definitely be life.  _Many_ life sentences."

Maggie met his eyes for another moment, then looked at the plea deal document. Phrases stuck out to her:  _Avoid a messy trial. Considering the heinous nature of the crimes. Generous._

"There's another condition," Pepper said, looking up from the document. "This one, the 'disclosure arrangement'."

Kemp's sharp eyes narrowed. "Yes, we were just getting to that. They require you to comply with any and all government investigations. Specifically, you  _only_ discuss details of your time under HYDRA with them. No media appearances, no public briefings, no online activity, not without prior approval from the Accords Committee and the State Department."

"Oh," Maggie said, shoulders sagging.

Tony scowled. "What about HERACLES?"

"Maggie would have to cut off any and all affiliation with HERACLES," Diego said, spreading his hands, " _especially_ as regards contributing new content."

Tony, Pepper, and the lawyers continued to discuss the plea deal, but Maggie leaned back in her seat. She almost felt relieved that the decision had been made for her. She closed her eyes.

_So we're doing this, then._  She allowed herself to shiver at the chill of fear that ran over her, and then opened her eyes.

"No."

That stopped the discussion between the others at the table. They all looked at her, and Maggie sat up straight. "It's a no," she clarified. She turned to Kemp. "Tell them no."

A glint of satisfaction flickered in Kemp's eyes, and the other woman nodded. "You're sure?"

"You know I am," she replied, and turned to Diego. He looked exasperated, but not surprised. "They're not going to lift that condition, are they?"

He sighed and ran a hand over his beard. "No. We've only been speaking with the prosecution, but it's pretty obvious they've got powerful people pulling their strings. They were willing to drop charges, but not this. They want to keep you silent."

"Well I'm not great at doing that, historically," Maggie muttered, and Tony leaned in to her. She could feel the tension buzzing across his body, but she knew without looking at him that he agreed with her on this.

"Alright," Diego said, taking the plea deal document back from Pepper. "We'll pass it on. In the meantime…" He stood up and looked at the three people sitting across from him. "This means we're heading to trial. Do what you need to do to prepare." He met their eyes for a few more moments, then helped Kemp gather her documents and left the room with her.

Maggie found Tony's hand and squeezed it. "We can do this."

"Yeah. I mean, probably-" her head snapped around to look at him, and he grimaced. "No, you're right. Sure. Yeah, we can do this. Why not?"

 

* * *

 

As October turned into November, they went in and out of court a few times for legal matters regarding the upcoming trial: discovery negotiations, issues with witnesses and evidence, arguing about the media's influence on the trial. Most of the time Maggie sat there as her lawyers did what they did best, and then blinked in the flash-bang of cameras as they left court.

In early November her bail arrangements got tweaked to allow her to stay at the old Stark mansion in New York City, as well as at the Avengers Facility. It was getting too hard to travel all the way in from upstate every day.

Maggie moved back into her childhood home. The empty spaces echoed with memories, but as she paced across the marble floors and ran her hands over the ornately carved wooden banisters, Maggie felt a piece of herself slot back into place. She was a little embarrassed to realize how much wealth she had grown up with, but it was nice to see hints of that grandeur marked by evidence that the house had been lived in and loved: photographs of herself with her mother, father, and brother on the walls, a portrait of Ana and Edwin Jarvis in the study, a rusted child's bike in the garage, Tony's name carved into a post on the stairs.

To her surprise and sorrow, her bedroom was untouched. A thick layer of dust coated everything within: the warm quilted bed that was too small for her now, the wooden toybox, the little desk by the window. Before she'd left with her parents that December day, she'd been working on homework from her tutors – the dust-laden papers were shuffled in a neat little pile on the corner of the desk and weighed down by a faded Game Boy.

Maggie picked her way through the room, eyeing the dusty, forgotten belongings. She felt guilty, as if she were snooping through a stranger's room, even as small things called to long-forgotten memories: the texture of the red pillow on the floor, the way the bush outside the window tapped at the glass panes. She pressed a hand against a low wooden stool and closed her eyes, so as to better remember the way her mother had looked when she perched on it, putting Maggie to bed.

Maggie couldn't bring herself to change this space. For sanity's sake she tried not to think of herself as two different people, but in this bedroom she could feel a ghost: the ghost of the girl she used to be. Maggie might have come back. But that girl hadn't.

Maggie closed the door behind her, disturbed, and moved into one of the guest rooms.

 

Most weekdays Maggie stayed at the mansion (which Tony had beefed up with state-of-the-art security), meeting with her lawyers in the well-stocked, comfortable library, and reminiscing with Tony when they had free time. She dusted and tuned their mother's grand piano, and started learning to play. Tony sat and listened sometimes, and once Maggie returned early from court to hear him playing, the notes melancholy and flowing and utterly flawless.

Tony had removed all the important files and documents years ago, but one night they descended together into the vault in the basement where their father had once stored all his creations, and stared at the empty shelves.

The mansion was too crowded with old, painful memories to really be their home, but Maggie needed the comfort it brought her as her trial date grew ever closer and the world waited to see the darkest, most painful depths of her past. Sometimes it was nice to sit on the marble foyer floor watching sunbeams illuminate dust motes in the air, and pretend that she was four years old and innocent.

 

* * *

 

Maggie spent most of her time on trial preparation, or on updating HERACLES, but she and Tony still somehow found time to develop ideas in the workshop at the Avengers Facility. Tony was used to squeezing in workshop time even when he was busy, and Maggie needed the distraction.

Somehow they got far enough with their work on cybernetic prostheses and exosuits for Tony to reveal the project to the Development team at Stark Industries. The team was excited about the new technology, particularly its applicability to many kinds of disability and amputation. Stark Industries's board was excited about breaking into a new market, and about the financial projections – Maggie and Tony had been playing with the technology for a while now, and they had figured out how to produce the prostheses at a low cost, while retaining maximum product performance. Maggie was new to the corporate side of engineering but she found she enjoyed it – it posed an additional problem on top of designing the best machine or part she could.

Patents were secured, regulatory requirements passed, and Stark Industries factories got to work producing the new line of medical technology.

Stark Industries hadn't wanted to mention Maggie's name at all in the process, given the whole charges-of-murder-and-terrorism thing. Tony had shouted at the board about intellectual property rights and corporate cowardice (and then Pepper had smoothed things over), and Maggie's name ended up on the patents right next to Tony's. Pepper framed the documents and put them in one of the display rooms at the Facility, next to Tony's first ever patent from the 90's. Maggie hadn't been too concerned about the issues with paperwork while they were happening, but she spent more than a few minutes looking up at the framed patent with its gold seal and the name  _Margaret Abigail Stark._

Pepper and Stark Industries worked their magic, and as the trial approached the Stark Prosthetics line hit the public market. The technology was affordable, smart, fast, and more comfortable to use than what the market had offered before. Some in the media and government protested technology produced by an alleged murderer, but the tech spoke for itself. Rhodey was a part of the marketing process: he affirmed the maneuverability, dexterity, and responsiveness of his own device, which was the prototype for the whole line.

Stark Prosthetics became a bestseller in every country that sold Stark products, adopted by those who'd lost body parts for multiple reasons, and Stark Industries reveled in the positive feedback and the stock market boost.

Maggie went into the pre-trial motion stage of her case knowing that even if she was about to face a trial that would send her to prison for life, she had done one thing in her life that would help people the world over for years to come.

 

* * *

 

Late November, 2016  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Maggie's lawyers tried a few different pre-trial motions – they attempted to have some of the charges dismissed, arguing that the prosecution was throwing the book at her, but there was evidence for each one of the crimes so the charge sheet stayed as it was. They also asked for a change of venue, given the intense public scrutiny and the daily crowds on the courthouse steps. But the attention wasn't exactly going to die down if they moved the trial to Jersey, so in Manhattan they remained.

Today they reckoned they had something that would stick. Maggie hadn't asked, she'd been too busy updating HERACLES to include an investigative section (pairing survivors and victim's family members with private investigators and interested members of law enforcement).

But now she sat in the courtroom again, giving her full attention to the judge as he called the session into order.

The courtroom was a beautiful, wide space, with a high ceiling and sturdy wooden pews. It was the largest courtroom in the courthouse, because any time Maggie appeared in court the room was always packed, even though the trial hadn't even started yet. She could hear the low murmur of conversation in the rows behind her, and her enhanced ears picked up on a few details of conversations – Tony and Rhodey, in the row behind the defense table, were arguing whose suit looked better.

The judge was a mid-sixties African American man called Benjamin Moore, and he'd be the judge for her trial going forward. Maggie had a lot of trouble reading him – she knew he was patient yet firm, and he didn't put up with legal obfuscation from either side, but beyond that he was a stone wall.

Right now Moore leveled that stone-wall look at Diego, who set several thick folders on the defense table with a  _thunk_.

"Your honor," Diego said, pushing his glasses up his nose, "I would like to make a motion to suppress this collection of evidence, specifically exhibits 17 through 25."

Moore looked down at his notes, and Maggie heard the prosecution whispering amongst themselves. "Be so kind as to describe the nature of the evidence, Mr Martinez?"

Diego cleared his throat. "Exhibits 17 through 25 refer to the interviews my client had with various investigative agencies – the FBI, the CIA…" He kept talking, but he was drowned out by a sudden buzz of conversation throughout the courtroom.

Maggie blinked and looked up at Diego. "What are you doing?"

"Ms Stark, please," he said, holding up a hand. When the commotion died down a little, he turned back to Judge Moore and continued: "we move to suppress this evidence on the grounds that it was obtained illegally."

Moore raised an eyebrow. "Please elaborate."

"Certainly, your honor. I've asked the prosecution to invite Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross to the courtroom today, and I'd like to call him to the witness box."

"Very well."

Maggie twisted in her seat and craned her neck. She hadn't noticed Ross when she came into the courtroom, but she hadn't exactly been making a lot of eye contact. Sure enough, there he was – he'd come in full military dress, medals gleaming on his chest and his silver hair neatly brushed. Maggie scowled and met Tony's eye. "What's he doing here?" she mouthed. Tony shrugged, and gestured at Diego and Kemp.

Ross approached the witness box and took a seat, nodding politely to the judge and glancing around the courtroom with an agreeable look on his face. When he looked at Maggie blankly, as if he hadn't been spitting insults at her the last time they'd met, her brow lowered and her fists clenched at her sides. Kemp nudged her under the table and she wiped the look from her face.

As the judge explained to Ross and the court that he wasn't being called as a witness to the trial, just being asked questions about a matter of evidence collection, Maggie breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, controlling her irritation against the Secretary of State. Inwardly, she worried – if she was this affected at a pre-trial motion, how was she going to handle herself when the trial actually started?

"Secretary Ross," Diego began when the judge signaled to him. "Thank you for coming today. Do you know why you've been invited to this courtroom?"

"Can't say I do," Ross replied with a genial smile. Maggie's eyes narrowed, and Kemp nudged her again.

"Well," Diego said, "we're here to discuss a number of interviews my client had with various law enforcement and investigative organisations over the past months. Now, you have explained to the public numerous times since July of this year that Ms Stark was under the custody of the Accords Committee and the State Department. You've been invited here today under your capacity as a senior member of the Accords Committee, and the Secretary of State."

"I understand," Ross said, folding his hands on the witness box bench.

Diego smiled, all genial warmth and kindness. "Excellent. Now, Mr Secretary, how did my client come to be under your custody?"

"She was captured at the conclusion of the Avengers' clash at the Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany, in which she fought against the Sokovia Accords."

A murmur went through the courtroom. Maggie didn't look over her shoulder.

"I notice you say  _captured_ , Mr Secretary, instead of  _arrested._ " Ross frowned, and Diego cocked his head as if asking for a small clarification. "What condition was Ms Stark in when she was  _captured_?"

Ross's frown deepened as he realized where this was going. He tried to veer off course: "Ms Stark is a highly dangerous criminal who is notoriously difficult to control–"

"Please just answer the question, Mr Secretary. What condition was Ms Stark in when she was captured?"

Ross scowled, his brow lowering and his eyes darkening. "She was unconscious," he said gruffly.

"And why was that?"

At that, the prosecutor David Mallory got to his feet and said "your honor, what is the relevance of this?"

"We're not at trial yet, Mr Mallory," Moore reminded him.

Diego spread his hands. "I assure you I'm about to get to the point. Mr Secretary? Why was my client unconscious?"

Ross was struggling to hide his glare now. "She'd been injured in the fight."

"So she was incapable of receiving her Miranda rights at that time."

Another murmur went through the courtroom, louder this time.

Ross managed to grit out: "That's right."

"And at any point from regaining consciousness after her injury, to when she was taken into Department of Justice custody on October 5th, did any member of law enforcement read my client her Miranda rights?"

Everyone stared at Ross. He glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, and it was plain to see how angry he was. He didn't need to be prompted this time. He looked back at Diego, practically murdering him with his eyes, and said: "No."

Everyone in the gallery burst out talking, and Diego turned to the judge to say "Your honor, any statement my client made to any member of law enforcement before October 5th is clearly inadmissible in court as it violates her fifth amendment and sixth amendment right to counsel–" at that point the volume in the courtroom got too loud, but Diego had made his point. Judge Moore reached for his gavel, and Ross turned murderous eyes on Maggie. She glared right back.

 

After court, Maggie cornered Diego and Kemp. "Why did you do that? I gave them that information of my own free will, I want them to use it–"

Kemp held up a hand. "They  _can_ use it, Maggie, for everything except as evidence against you in court."

Diego continued: "I promise we're not hiding your truth, Maggie. We're just making sure you get to keep your rights. Ross really screwed up with this, and it's our job to make sure he doesn't get away with it."

That calmed her down. "Fine. But the second someone  _legally_ asks me those questions again I'm going to answer them."

Diego sighed. "Believe me, I am  _painfully_ aware of that." He and Kemp shared a commiserating look, then turned back to her.

"Besides," Kemp continued, "Now you've got a decent start to a civil suit against the Accords Committee, if you want."

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "Haven't you got enough work as it is with  _one_ trial?"

The other woman shrugged. "You're the one footing the bill."

"That's true. But since the arresting officer was technically my  _brother_ , I don't really feel like opening that can of worms."

"Fair enough."

Maggie nodded and turned to go find Tony and Rhodey, but then stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Hey, Diego."

He glanced up and raised his eyebrows.

She grinned. "You kicked his ass back there. Thanks."

He rolled his eyes. " _De nada._ "

 

* * *

 

_The New York Bulletin_ Article:  _Secretary Ross's Legal Blunder_

 

* * *

__

Jimothy  
@beatleboy   
Can't believe #thewyvern is getting away with legal technicalities #differentrights #richgirl #guilty 3:20 PM - 30 November 2016  1700  4533 

 

* * *

 

CNN: "Well Bill, this is a bad look for the prosecution and the trial hasn't even started yet!"

 

* * *

 

_The Wall Street Journal_  Article:  _Revoking Rights: at what point do the Accords Committee's special powers go too far?_

 

* * *

 

December 2nd, 2016  
Stark Mansion, Manhattan

"Ms Stark."

"Mrs… Kemp?"

"I'm sorry for coming without calling ahead, but… may I come in?"

Maggie nodded to the security agent standing at the door, who let the lawyer in. The trial had technically started, but there'd been nothing but jury selection for days (that had been a mess in itself – there wasn't a person in New York who didn't know the name Stark, and the intense publicity made finding neutral jurors almost impossible). Jury selection was over now, though, and the opening statements were scheduled for after the weekend. Maggie knew both Kemp and Diego were run off their feet preparing, so she didn't understand why Kemp had shown up at the mansion after business hours on a Friday.

Kemp's eyes darted around the foyer, taking in the marble floor and sparse furnishings, then flicked back to Maggie. "Is there somewhere we can talk?"

A spark of dread flared in Maggie's chest. "Sure."

She led the lawyer to the library and gestured to two upholstered seats at a reading table. Tony was somewhere in the mansion (probably the old workshop if she had to guess) but if Kemp had bad news then Maggie wanted to break it to Tony gently.

When they sat, Maggie scrutinized Kemp's face: the normally stoic, sharp-eyed lawyer was uncharacteristically nervous, tucking her black hair behind her ears and adjusting her bag.

"What is it?" she asked, sinking back in her seat and preparing for the worst. The warm light and subdued atmosphere in the library weren't calming her down.

Kemp looked up and finally noticed the dread on Maggie's face. She sighed. "Look, I want to tell you something up front. I am professionally 100 per cent dedicated to your case. However, I should mention that…" Kemp fidgeted again, and Maggie's jaw clenched. "My grandmother's name is Shirley Kemp."

There was a second of silence.

Maggie blinked. "Um… what?"

Kemp cocked her head and took a breath. "She used to be Shirley Barnes."

Maggie froze.  _Holy shit._

Bucky used to talk about his three little sisters all the time – Rebecca, Nancy, and  _Shirley._ Shirley who had been twelve when Bucky went off to war, who had replied to his letters with all the latest news from Brooklyn, who had once sent him a pressed dandelion. Shirley who never saw her older brother again.

She'd be eighty five years old, now.

"Oh my god," Maggie said. "Oh my  _god_."

"Yes," Kemp replied, watching Maggie's reaction. "Quite."

"Oh my god," she repeated, then met Kemp's eyes. "I told you about–"

"Yes, and everything you told me remains within attorney-client privilege."

Maggie's hand flew to her mouth, then dropped. "But  _still,_ I… that's… he's your…"

"My great-uncle, yes."

Maggie's head dropped into her hands. "Oh my god." She'd known, she'd  _known_ , that Bucky's sisters had kids and grandkids – she just hadn't expected her brother to  _hire one as her goddamn lawyer._

Kemp cleared her throat. "I understand if you don't want me to represent you any more, but I would strongly encourage you to remain with Diego. We can get another lawyer from our firm to pick up the slack–"

Maggie's head jumped up. "What? No. Just… give me a second, here." She took a few steadying breaths and gripped the table. "Okay. Um… so I don't want to fire you, but are  _you_ sure? Do you really want to represent me, even with… y'know?"

Kemp smiled – Maggie blinked, and realized she hadn't really ever seen the other woman smile. It was a small, sharp thing, but it made her face kinder. "I absolutely do," she replied.

Maggie let out a breath. The second of relaxation prompted a new thought:  _you totally told this lady that you've been dating her ninety-nine year old great-uncle._ Her cheeks burned.

"Don't get me wrong," Kemp said, "this trial is going to be tough. But I think I'm the woman for the job." She met Maggie's eyes, determined.

"Okay," Maggie breathed. "Thanks for telling me. How is… how is Shirley doing? She lives by herself, right?"

Kemp's eyebrows raised, as if she hadn't been expecting that question. "She's doing alright. How much do you know about her?"

Maggie swallowed guiltily. "Um. I know that she married at twenty, to a local Brooklyn baseball player. I know she ran a seamstress store from the fifties to the eighties, and that she had five children and twenty grandchildren – one of which is you, I guess." She ducked her head at the incredulous look Kemp shot her. "And I know that Shirley was involved pretty heavily with veteran and bereaved family support groups."

"You seem pretty well-informed."

"I might've done some research. Clearly not enough." Maggie sighed, and rubbed her hands over her face. "This is weird. Do you want a drink, Mrs Kemp?"

"Sure. And at this point I think you can call me Andrea."

As Maggie fetched a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from the library liquor cabinet –  _thanks, dad_ – she gathered her thoughts. When she sat back at the table with Kemp –  _Andrea_ – she eyed the other woman's face. She couldn't see any traces of Bucky there, but she hadn't really been expecting to. Still, this was… she swallowed. It was strange to see a living, breathing reminder that Bucky wasn't alone on this earth – he had  _family._

"Do you know…" Maggie frowned. "Did your grandmother ever talk about her brother?"

Andrea sipped her whiskey. "Not to me, not really. We all talked about him of course, we all knew we were related to Bucky Barnes – the Howling Commando and Steve Rogers' best friend."

Maggie smiled, unreasonably happy that she hadn't said  _Captain America's best friend._

Andrea continued: "But it was… history, you know?"

"I know." Maggie rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm, uh… sorry. About all the stuff I told you about Bucky."

Andrea's lips curled into a smile. "I can handle it." Then a thoughtful look crossed her face. "But ever since you spoke about him, I can't help wondering… is he… okay? Bucky Barnes?" Her words were hesitant, as if she wasn't used to referring to Bucky as being alive.

Maggie sighed and looked into her glass of whiskey. She knew she couldn't tell Andrea that her great-uncle was currently frozen in cryostasis. "I haven't seen him in a while," she murmured. "But he was doing okay. He remembered…" she swallowed. "He remembered his family. His sisters. We looked them up together." She remembered the pained expression in Bucky's blue-grey eyes as he looked at the photographs of his sisters, old and grey. Rebecca and Nancy, the elder sisters, had both died before the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. They'd lived long, happy lives, but Maggie remembered thinking how  _unfair_ it was to all of them that they and Bucky had missed each other by a matter of years.

Andrea eyed Maggie's expression and sighed. "I know this is a complicated situation, but would you…" she hesitated, and Maggie looked up. "Would you like to meet her? Gran? Or rather, Shirley, that is."

Maggie's eyes widened. "Oh, I… Is that a good idea?"

"It's up to you. Gran's doing pretty well for her age, she's got a strong will. She already knows that her brother is alive, after all the UN bombing news–"

"Christ," Maggie swore. She hadn't even thought about that.

"– and she knows he's on the run. She knows I'm handling your case, too. She knows the Wyvern is connected to the Winter Soldier" – a shadow crossed Andrea's face at the names – "so there's not a lot you could say to shock her."

"I don't know about that," Maggie said, cheeks burning again.

Andrea's eyebrows lifted. "Like I said, I think she could handle it. What do you say?"

"I… uh… well," she bit her lip.  _Bucky's sister._ "Yes. Please."

"Great, I'll see if she can come by tomorrow. Your bail conditions don't say anything about visitors."

Maggie's mouth dropped open, but Andrea had already pulled out her phone and started tapping away. She'd gotten to a point where she felt like she knew Bucky's sisters, knew their stories and their triumphs and their secrets. The prospect of meeting the only surviving sister was… terrifying.

She tossed back her whiskey.

 

* * *

 

December 3rd, 2016  
Stark Mansion, Manhattan

Apparently, Andrea hadn't thought to warn her grandmother about who she would be meeting.

When an elderly woman walked into the mansion's east sitting room (Mr Jarvis's favorite, Maggie remembered), she glanced up, took one look at Maggie standing by the door and exclaimed "Oh, it's  _you_!" with a look of utter delight on her face.

Maggie knew the polite thing would be to say something back, or to help the woman to her seat, but she could only stare.

Shirley Kemp had aged well – her hair was a white cloud around her head, and though she was hunched by age she stood on her own two feet, looking comfortable in her smart jacket and trousers. She beamed at Maggie as if they'd known each other for years. Maggie spotted Shirley's similarities to Bucky immediately – her eyes (though dimmer with age) were a memorable shade of grey-blue, and she resembled her brother in the shape of her wrinkled face.

"Are you alright?" Shirley asked, her voice low and slightly husky. She raised two fine, white eyebrows.

Maggie blinked. "Yes, I… come in, I'm sorry. Have a seat." She helped Shirley to one of the white upholstered seats with a view of the courtyard garden. "Do you want something to drink?"

"Got any gin?" the woman replied with a twinkle in her eye.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Maggie asked, then realized that might have been rude. But Shirley just smiled again, the skin around her eyes creasing into dozens of wrinkles. "Ooh, you sound just like my son. Alright, water then."

Maggie poured a glass of water, watching Shirley out of the corner of her eye. She'd been thinking about this all night and morning, and she still didn't know what to say. She sat at the chair across from Shirley and found herself staring again. Those  _eyes_.

"Lovely weather we've been having," the older woman commented wryly, eyes fixed on Maggie's. She didn't even glance out the window.

"Um. Yes," Maggie agreed. Shirley's eyes glinted, and Maggie sighed. "Okay, so… I know who you are, and I figure you know who I am?"

Shirley smiled. "I have been keeping up with the news, yes." She held Maggie's gaze a few seconds more, but then a shadow crossed her face. "Though I'm not sure why you've asked me to come, Ms Stark. Would you mind telling me?"

Maggie sighed and leaned forward. "You've been keeping up with the news?"

"I have." Shirley's eyes softened.

"Then you know… who I used to be."

"The Wyvern," the older woman breathed. "Scary name. I know about that, Ms Stark. And I've read the HYDRA files, what I can stomach of them anyway. I know you fought alongside the Winter Soldier. My brother." The smile was gone from her face now but she wasn't angry – she looked tired, and sad. "I know you fought beside him again this year in Germany."

Maggie swallowed and pressed her hands together. "It's true. I knew – I  _know_ your brother, Shirley." The confirmation seemed to hit Shirley hard – her faded grey-blue eyes filled with raw pain, and her mouth turned down. Up until this point Maggie hadn't known what to say, but now it came to her. "He's a good man."

Shirley's eyes welled up. "I know," she said hoarsely. "Or I.. I hoped he was  _still_ a good man, even after everything that happened with that bombing-"

"That wasn't him," Maggie cut in firmly.

Shirley smiled. "I know, I've kept up with the news. Where did he go?"

Maggie pressed her lips together.

"You know where he is," Shirley whispered, leaning forward. Maggie blinked – Shirley was  _quick._

"I… not really," she hedged. "I can't tell you."

"That's alright," Shirley sighed, and sank back in her seat. "I know… the world is complicated right now. He can't come home so easily."

Maggie's heart wrenched.

A frown crossed Shirley's face and she eyed Maggie. "He's not helping you out with all this…" she waved a hand, "this trial nonsense?"

Maggie smiled. "No, but I don't mind. It was sort of my idea, anyway."

For the next ten minutes Shirley explained just how much she knew about Bucky's return from the dead – apparently Steve had come to visit her after he came out of the ice in 2012, to see how she was doing. He'd visited her at least once every few months, but apparently the visits made him sad ("He was stuck between the world that had grown old without him and the new one he'd found himself in – he was very lonely, I think"). After the fall of HYDRA in 2014 Steve broke the news that Bucky was still alive, and had given her periodic updates on the search from then until the UN bombing. But Shirley had figured Bucky was okay, since the Accords Committee had named him as a fugitive. She'd gotten plenty of interview requests as one of the last surviving people who had known Bucky before his time in HYDRA, but she'd denied them all.

"I wanted to do what was best for him, but I wasn't sure what to do."

At this point Maggie had migrated to the seat next to Shirley's, her arms wrapped around her knees as she listened to the elderly woman talk.

Shirley sighed. "So you know Bucky well? I only knew him for twelve years, and I've stacked another seventy three years on top of those memories, I'm afraid. Tell me about him."

So Maggie did. She tried to describe the man that Bucky Barnes was in 2016, but she found the description was oddly stilted, incomplete. And she knew why.

Eventually she sighed. "Look, this is going to sound weird, for a  _lot_ of reasons, one of which is the fact that you're… y'know–"

Shirley smiled. "Old?"

Maggie blinked at her. "Well, that, but I was going to say the fact that you're Bucky's sister…" she bit her lip. "Bucky and I were –  _are_ – sort of… together." She winced, and looked up at the other woman from under her lashes.

Shirley's eyebrows shot up, but almost immediately she was nodding as if she'd expected something like that. "Well I did see the photos of him in Germany, and he's certainly aged better than I have."

Maggie hiccuped a laugh. "Uh, yeah… I guess he has. HYDRA had this cryo-tube, it… preserved him. Between missions."

Shirley's face went dark and Maggie's heart sank, but she didn't want to sanitize this. There was a long silence between them as they processed.

Eventually, Shirley leaned forward and asked: "Is he good to you?"

She smiled. "Yes. He treats me better than I probably deserve. I really miss him."

"That's wonderful," Shirley beamed. "You know, he had a bit of a reputation back in Brooklyn–"

Maggie laughed. "I know, back when we were remembering our pasts it seemed every other story began with 'I was out with this blonde,' or 'I'd just taken a redhead on a date.'" She rolled her eyes, and Shirley's eyes sparkled. "I've teased him a few times about it."

It was Shirley's turn to laugh, the sound worn by age but filled with something like nostalgia. "I was a little young to really understand all that before he left for the war, but Rebecca told me she used to warn Bucky that one day or another, he'd find someone who caught his eye –  _really_ caught his eye – and then he'd have all the trouble he caused turned back tenfold on him."

Maggie's gaze dropped and she smiled to herself. "I wish I could have met them. Rebecca and Nancy."

Shirley raised an eyebrow and Maggie suddenly remembered that Shirley hadn't actually mentioned Nancy by name yet.  _Oops._

"Well," Shirley said, "you've managed to catch me before I follow them on, and I have to say – it's wonderful to meet you."

"Likewise. You're a lot like him, you know."

"Oh? Nancy and Rebecca used to say so, but what makes you say it?"

Maggie tipped her head. "You're… driven, I guess. You weren't going to let me get away with small talk earlier, and Bucky's the same when he's got a goal in mind. Andrea's got a similar intense focus, now I think of it. But I guess you mostly remind me of him when you smile – Bucky's  _kind,_ which I thought was pretty incredible after all we went through. I guess it runs in the family."

Shirley's eyes crinkled, and she reached out. Maggie didn't second guess herself – she laid her hand in the other woman's wrinkled, papery one, and smiled when Shirley's fingers tightened around hers.

 

Maggie and Shirley talked for the rest of the morning and through lunch (Maggie hadn't planned that far ahead, but she made sandwiches for them both under Shirley's instruction). They talked about Bucky, Steve (who they were equally admiring of and exasperated by), and Shirley and her sisters. Maggie knew that Nancy never married, but she hadn't realized that Nancy was actually in a long-term relationship with another woman when she died, and had made a name for herself in the civil rights movement in the sixties and seventies.

But by mid-afternoon Shirley needed to return home. They made plans to meet up the next weekend, if Maggie wasn't busy with the trial.

"I'll see you next week, Shirley."

"If I'm still alive by then. Oh don't look so horrified, I'm allowed to make jokes about my own mortality!"

As Maggie watched Shirley's car leave the mansion's driveway she pressed her hands against her stomach.

The last time she'd cared so much about an elderly person had been with Mr Jarvis and his wife. She hadn't had much of a concept of death back then, but now… it was terrifying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again I want to reiterate that I'm not a legal expert. Questioning the Secretary of State during a pre-trial motion is probably iffy, but I needed it. For reasons.
> 
> Next chapter: the trial begins!


	61. Chapter 61

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another huge chapter! Also: obligatory "not a lawyer" reminder.
> 
> Content warning for mentions of gore.
> 
> EDIT: I'm actually going to put a blanket trigger warning here for roughly the next ~7 chapters, for court testimony, testifying about traumatic past events, and hostility toward victims of trauma. If you're concerned that will be an issue for you, feel free to PM me and I can let you know what to steer clear of :)
> 
> Edit #2: Formatted the tweets!
> 
> Thanks to ff.net's Rochu Robalo and Lightblade23 for helping me fix my terrible Spanish last chapter!

 

December 5th, 2016  
Stark Mansion, New York City

Maggie descended the gleaming stairs of the mansion, one hand running lightly along the wooden banister. She'd dressed with purpose this morning – a conservative suit, no flashy colors, with her pearl necklace tucked under her blouse. She'd brushed her teeth and stared into the bathroom mirror for a few long minutes, feeling self conscious. It reminded her of the first time she'd looked at her reflection after escaping HYDRA – she'd been so startled then to see a  _person_ in her eyes, and not a weapon. The realization had scared her then, but today it gave her the strength to turn and face her fate.

She glanced up when she reached the bottom of the stairs, eyeing the group of people gathered to accompany her to the courthouse. A coterie of guards of course, but also Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, and Andrea and Diego. Vision had wanted to come, but Maggie wasn't comfortable with the thought of the Avengers Facility going unmanned just because she had a court date.

Maggie ran her eyes over the grim faces waiting for her. "Hey."

They returned the greeting, either in murmurs or in forcefully-cheerful tones. Tony didn't speak at all, which worried her – he'd gone past anxious word vomit and into silence. Maggie could see his fear, plain in his eyes, and she felt as if there was a stone sitting in her stomach.

"We doing this, then?" she asked, and they got moving. She sensed this wasn't a time for inspiring words – everyone had too much to think about for that.

On the way out to the car Maggie spotted the pile of papers that had been delivered that morning, sitting on a bench just inside the front door. Her own face looked back at her from the paper on top, grim and unreadable, under the words  _UNITED STATES V STARK._

A jitter of nerves ran through her and she fixed her gaze straight ahead.  _This could be the beginning of the end._

 

Twenty minutes later Maggie walked up the stairs to the courthouse in a blaze of flashing lights and shouts. At the top of the stairs she looked up at the stone pillars and closed her eyes for a brief moment, her thoughts for some reason turning back to that crystallized moment on the Helicarriers almost three years ago. Her mind had been a snowstorm of half-memories and clashing missions, and in the midst of that chaos a single thought had come to the forefront of her mind:

_Your name is Margaret._

Maggie replayed the memory of Bucky's voice like a ritual as she made her way to the courtroom.  _Your name is Margaret. Your name is Margaret._

 

* * *

 

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good morning," said the prosecutor David Mallory, his eyes tracking across each member of the jury. They'd ended up with seven women and five men, with a wide mix of ethnicities and ages. "We're here today not to seek justice for a single crime, or a single person. No, we are here on behalf of thirty six victims of murder and their families, some of whom are in the courtroom today. That alone should be enough but we are here to discuss other crimes as well. Espionage: within America and overseas. Terrorism: again domestic and international. Treason. Grand larceny. Kidnapping. These crimes were committed over two decades so I don't blame you for feeling overwhelmed: that is a prodigious amount of pain and suffering. Pain and suffering inflicted by Margaret Stark."

He paused, letting his words hang in the air. "The question of this trial is not going to be  _if_ Margaret Stark committed these murders, these heinous acts. It will be  _why._ I'll tell you now: it's not because Ms Stark is an angry or emotional person – she was not jealous of her victims, she didn't disagree with their ideologies, she didn't hate them.

"It's also not because she was under some kind of sustained 'mind control'. We will show that Ms Stark actively participated in these crimes – she thought them through carefully, down to the last detail. She built weapons, packed supplies, discussed attack plans with her handlers. We will show evidence that Ms Stark used her superior intelligence to plan a chemical attack on the home of Georgian politician Ana Dadiani – killing Mrs Dadiani, her husband, household staff, and her six-year-old twin sons. We will show that Ms Stark utilized her expertise in electronic hacking to ruthlessly track father of four Philip Rushman across the United States, before hunting him down to his hotel room and choking him to death."

Mallory ran his eyes across the jury. "These are not the actions of a mindless victim.

"No. Margaret Stark is a contract killer. She may have begun her time at HYDRA as a victim, but we cannot forget that she spent twenty-two years with them without a single escape attempt until HYDRA fell apart in 2014. She is a highly skilled, intelligent, and ruthless mercenary who worked with HYDRA until the very last moment. As we will show, she then turned her skills toward avoiding capture and manipulating those who would punish her for her crimes.

"This is not going to be an easy trial. You are going to see pain, and suffering, and death. Margaret Stark suffered, but she unleashed that suffering tenfold on  _dozens_ of innocent victims. There is no question of whether she did these things – she admits them herself.

"So before I begin to describe the details of each crime we have the task of judging, I ask you to remember one thing from this point forward. We are not here for one crime, or one person. But we are here with one objective: justice. The crimes you are about to hear have gone unaddressed and unpunished for years, and it is your task now to rectify that."

 

For forty five minutes Mallory described each crime in as much detail as he could, in chronological order. He told the jury each victim's name, and how they died. For some of them it was just a few lines in a file, usually ending with  _the Wyvern was successful._

Maggie focused on breathing, her hands clasped in her lap as she looked at the desk in front of her, and listened.

She'd known it was going to be bad, but… Mallory's words called to every small doubt she had ever felt about herself.  _How could I have unleashed so much destruction without a second thought? I'm meant to be a genius, why didn't I overcome the programming? I really never tried to escape?_

At one point she heard a sharp intake of breath behind her, followed by someone whispering " _Tony, no._ "

She glanced over her shoulder and saw Tony half-standing out of his seat, his face wrenched with rage, while Pepper and Rhodey gripped his arms as if holding him down. He tried to meet Maggie's eyes but she just… she just  _couldn't_ , so she turned back around and stared at the desk. She could feel the jury looking at her.

When Mallory finished, polite and grim-faced, Maggie half believed it. She was barely aware of her surroundings as Diego checked his notes and then stood to address the jury. Her focus was turned inward.

As Diego spoke, Maggie drifted. She heard phrases like  _utterly controlled from five years old to twenty eight_ ;  _obliterated her memories_ ; and  _hers are not the guilty hands._ But she didn't take it in.

Before she knew it, the opening statements were over and Judge Moore called a short recess before the first prosecution witness appeared. Maggie followed her lawyers out of the courtroom, gaze fixed in the middle distance.

"Maggie?"

She looked up. They were outside the courtroom now, in a quiet hallway. "Yes?"

It was Diego. "Are you okay?"

She stared back at him. "… No."

"Do you need something?"

There was movement behind her – footsteps approaching on the carpet. She looked over her shoulder and noted that it was Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper, but she barely saw them. Her gaze dropped.

How could she have forgotten what she was? She'd been pretending to be a person, pretending she was free, pretending she could move on. She'd forgotten her twenty-two-year long legacy of violence and death but she couldn't escape that person because it was in her bones–

"Hey, no, I know that look." Suddenly Tony was in front of her – not touching, he knew her better than that – his gaze burning into hers. "You can't let that asshole get to you Maggie, you and I both know he's got it wrong. You weren't on HYDRA's side, you weren't  _working_ for them, you were their  _prisoner_."

She looked down, avoiding the fire in his eyes. "But I didn't try to escape, what if I–" her voice cracked, and Tony reached out tentatively to lay one hand on her shoulder. She leaned into the touch, though she knew she didn't deserve it.

"Look," Tony said, his voice low. "Do you think… do you  _think_ –" he gritted his teeth, as if the words waiting on his tongue made him physically sick. Maggie glanced up. Tony glared at her shoulder, but after a long moment he met her eyes and continued. "If this situation were different, if it were… if it were  _him_ sitting where you're sitting, would you say he was on HYDRA's side? Would you say he wanted to do the things that he did?"

Maggie's eyes shot wide open at the realization of what, of  _who_ he was talking about. She stared at him in utter shock but Tony didn't look away, and he didn't back down from the words.

And something about his determination for her to stand up for herself reminded her of Bucky's words from years ago:  _you can't go on hating yourself. You gotta know, in your head, that you didn't have a choice. Might not change what you feel, but don't go around thinking that you chose to be a murderer._

The memory unstuck her lips. "No," she whispered.

Tony nodded. "Then neither did you. So buckle up, Magpie, this is only the start. It sucks, but I know you can get through it. No more believing the way that jackass spins facts, okay?"

She blinked. "Okay."

Andrea, who had been standing in a huddle with the others to give Tony and Maggie some privacy, spoke up: "We've got to be back in court in five minutes, are we okay here?"

Maggie met Tony's eyes and jerked her head in a nod. "We're okay."

 

* * *

 

Maggie didn't recognize the prosecution's first witness, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or not. The witness was a slight woman, middle-aged, blonde, and her eyes darted nervously toward Maggie as she approached the witness box.

Maggie might not have recognized the woman, but she recognized her story.

After stating her name (Catriona Berger), date of birth, address, occupation (shop clerk) and swearing to tell the truth, the woman sat and faced the prosecutor.

"Mrs Berger – may I call you that?" asked Mallory.

"Yes, I still go by that name."

"Could you please tell the court about your late husband, Frederic Berger?"

"Um… Frederic and I got married in 2002. He was… we had our problems, but we loved each other – so much. I knew from the moment I met him that I wanted to marry him, and he said he felt the same way."

"What sort of problems did you have with your husband, Mrs Berger?"

She shifted. "I… we lived in D.C. at the time, and he was working as a lobbyist. I knew he was well-connected. High up people, political people, I mean. But… I didn't know what it was, but I could feel something was wrong. He would come home late with a flimsy excuse, he'd have meetings with people and get angry if I asked about them. He also earned a lot more money than someone in his position should, but I didn't realize that until later."

"Could you please describe what occurred on the morning of July 2nd, 2004?"

Mrs Berger swallowed. "I'd actually been staying with my sister all week, because… well, I thought Fred was cheating on me. He denied it, but he couldn't explain away all the strange things that were happening. But I decided to come back that morning because I knew he had the day off, and I wanted to talk things out."

"This is a picture of the home you shared with Mr Berger, correct?"

Mrs Berger looked up at the screen, which depicted a brick, three-story house with blue curtains. It looked nice. Maggie closed her eyes.

"Yes, that's it."

"What did you see when you arrived at the house?"

"The door was open. Just a crack, but the lock was broken like someone had used a tool or something to get in. I… I don't know why I didn't call the police. Looking back, I think I just wanted to know what was behind the door. Anyway, I went inside and… and…"

"What did you see?" Mallory asked, his voice soft.

"Fred was… he was on the stairs. Face down. But I knew he was dead because the back of his head, it-it was just  _caved in._ I could see…" Mrs Berger's face went white, and she hiccuped a small breath. "I could see his skull, it was broken. And… other things. I remember the only sound was just this  _dripping,_ because his blood was running down the stairs."

"What did you do at that point?"

"I didn't do anything. I just… stood inside the doorway, staring at him. I didn't make a sound. I honestly think that's why I'm alive today."

"Why is that?"

"Well I didn't notice her at first because she was so quiet, but the Wyvern was there–"

Kemp called: "Objection, your honor–"

Mallory held up a hand and redirected. "Did you know that was what she was called at the time?"

"No, sorry – I didn't know who she was. She… she was at the top of the stairs with her back to me. She was dressed all in black from head to toe, but she had… she had  _wings._ They were folded up against her back like how a bird rests its wings against its body, but I could see what they were. She turned to the side and I saw that she had a cowl that covered her face and head, except for these two red eyes – goggles."

"Would you say that this is the person you saw?" Mallory put up one of the photos of the Wyvern in D.C.

"Yes. She never saw me, but I couldn't take my eyes off her." Mrs Berger's eyes flickered to Maggie, just for an instant. "I remember… she didn't even look back at Fred. It was like he wasn't there. She climbed out the window at the top of the stairs, and I saw her fly away." She let out a shuddering breath.

"Thank you, Mrs Berger. Now…" Mallory picked up a plastic bag from the prosecution desk, revealing a tire iron, stained brown. "This is the weapon that ended your husband's life, isn't it?"

"Yes. The police said that it must have been a robbery, that someone used the tire iron to break into the house and then attacked Fred because they weren't expecting him to be home. His wallet and some of the silverware was gone. I knew better, but I… I grew up in Belarus, before my parents moved to America. We moved because my uncle was killed for speaking up about government corruption, so I learned at a young age that if you talk, you die. I knew that whatever Fred was involved in had killed him and I just… I just knew that if I told anyone what I'd seen, it would kill me too."

"You kept your silence for all these years?"

"Yes, I…" Mrs Berger looked down, tears glistening on her cheeks. "I loved my husband," she whispered. "But I didn't want to die."

"Perfectly understandable, Mrs Berger. Why have you come forward today?"

"Because when HYDRA fell apart and I saw the footage of the Wyvern, I knew– I knew I was free." She took in a long breath. "The Wyvern killed my husband. And I'm not afraid to say it anymore."

"We appreciate your courage, Mrs Berger. Now, would you mind reading an excerpt from Exhibit 12 for me? For the record, it's a page from a mission log sourced from the 2014 data leak. Please read the first highlighted section, dated June 28th, 2004."

Mrs Berger took the document with shaking fingers. "It says… it says  _Berger has lost favor with the Senator. No longer deemed useful to HYDRA's goals._ " She pressed her lips together as more tears slipped down her cheeks.

"And the second section, dated July 2nd, 2004?"

She swallowed. " _Wyvern assigned to Berger. Mission successful, no witnesses. Cover story intact._ " Her lips went white.

"Thank you for your courage Mrs Berger," Mallory said. "No further questions, your honor."

 

When Mrs Berger left the witness box and made her way out of the courtroom she met Maggie's eye for just a moment.

Maggie had no idea what her eyes conveyed to the other woman, but Mrs Berger's face hardened and she turned away, gaze fixed on the far end of the courtroom as she left. Maggie watched her go.  _You are alive because I made a mistake, and you did not._

The jury's eyes burned into the back of her head.

 

* * *

 

"Your name, for the record?"

"Cory Davidson, your honor."

"And your occupation?"

"I'm a senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon."

"Thank you. You may question the witness, Mr Mallory."

"Thank you, your honor. Mr Davidson, we're going to go over quite a significant amount of evidence with you today. The jury has been handed copies of mission logs and reports referring to the Wyvern sourced from the 2014 HYDRA information leak, various law enforcement reports regarding the Wyvern, electronic data recovered at a HYDRA base in Québec, and numerous other files. Could you please verify your ability to explain and contextualize this body of evidence?"

"Sure. My colleagues and I were tasked with analyzing the original 2014 leak, and I was then assigned to a group specifically tasked with compiling data regarding HYDRA's assets. I have read every shred of data available about the Wyvern and the crimes attributed to her."

"And you'll be able to give us your expert opinion not only on the likelihood that the Wyvern was responsible for the murders, but on the outcomes of her other offences? Such as espionage, theft of information, embezzlement?"

"Yes, that was my role at the Pentagon. Though I may have to decline to answer certain questions for the purpose of protecting classified information–"

"We're aware, Mr Davidson," Judge Moore interjected. "Tell us what you can."

"Thank you your honor," Mr Mallory said. "Mr Davidson, let's start with the murder of Ursula Winslow."

 

* * *

 

WHiH World News Broadcast

"Good afternoon Christine and Will," shouted WHiH reporter Chess Roberts over the din of shouts around her. "As you can see I'm here on the steps of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, where court proceedings for the Margaret Stark trial have just ended for the day. The atmosphere here is tense, to say the least, with opinions clashing early on about what the result of the trial ought to be. People have traveled from far and wide to witness this trial unfolding, and if the first day is anything to go by I think they've got an intense few weeks ahead of them."

"It looks pretty busy there Chess," said Christine, back in the studio. "What did the first day of trial have in store?"

"Well Christine, both the prosecution and the defense came out strong with powerful opening statements this morning. At this point it's clear that Margaret Stark's defense team, Diego Martinez and Andrea Kemp, are going to be pushing for a  _brainwashing_ defense. Now that's a rare thing to see in criminal cases – or indeed, any case. The most notable example was the 1976 Patty Hearst case, another story of a young heiress kidnapped and later found to be committing felonies. Now that case infamously didn't go well for Patty Hearst, so we can only assume that Martinez and Kemp have something better on the cards."

"What witnesses did we hear from today?" asked Will Adams.

"Well as you know Will, there's been a lot of speculation about just how the prosecution would go about laying their case – there's a lot of ground to cover, not just in years but in the sheer amount of crimes on the ticket, and they run the risk of overwhelming and confusing the jury.

"Today they started on a personal note. The prosecution's first witness was the wife of one of Ms Stark's victims, whose tearful testimony of witnessing the aftermath of her husband's murder set the tone for the day. She was followed by an expert witness from the Pentagon, whose testimony has barely begun. The prosecution's struck gold with him though, Will – he's articulate, not over-complicated, and is making the damage the Wyvern did to people and nations clear. The jury has been very engaged so far, taking notes and hanging on to every word."

"And how about the other players in the courtroom, Chess?"

"Right, well the courtroom's been full ever since the arraignment hearing – today it was packed with family members of victims, press, and anyone else who could find a spot. And that's nothing compared to the crowd outside the courtroom, which as you can see is huge and very, very vocal."

"And the defense side?"

"The defense lawyers haven't had much to say since their opening statement. They're clearly not going to dispute the fact that the Wyvern – excuse me, Ms Stark – committed these crimes. We'll have to see how  _that_ plan of attack pans out as the trial progresses. Ms Stark herself hasn't said a word, mostly facing the front of the courtroom. She came today with Tony Stark, who's been by her side since her indictment in October, as well as the CEO of Stark Industries Pepper Potts, and the War Machine Colonel James Rhodes. Aside from a small commotion during the opening statements they've been quiet."

"Thank you, Chess, that's all we have time for."

"Thank you Will and Christine, I'll continue to report on the trial as it unfolds."

 

* * *

 

Matthew Madan  
@thefutur1st   
We've only heard a fraction of the #wyverntrial and I'm already disgusted 5:45 PM - 5 December 2016  1767  12.1K 

 

* * *

 

Blog post:  _"If You Talk, You Die": How One Brave Woman Outlived HYDRA in Silence._

 

* * *

ya girl bea  
@beagood   
This Davidson dude is hot #pentagon #morelikemyPANTSareGONE #wyverntrial 3:42 PM - 5 December 2016  10.2K  20.6K 

 

* * *

Brie Collins  
@briecollinstdb   
I was in the #wyverntrial courtroom today. No one looks more horrified by the testimony than Maggie Stark. 6:12 PM - 5 December 2016  2819  17K 

 

* * *

 

Corey Davidson's testimony lasted eight days. He went into every shred of evidence and every detail of every crime Maggie had committed that had ever been written down.

Maggie's lawyers interjected every now and then when things strayed off track, such as when Davidson started talking about the Winter Soldier's long, bloody history – particularly the possibility that he had murdered JFK (Diego had got to his feet and said "Your honor is the Winter Solder on trial, or is my client?" Judge Moore had eyed the prosecutor and murmured "Keep it on track, Mr Mallory.").

Maggie knew about everything Davidson described, of course, but hearing the facts laid out so plainly, so calmly, brought a new level of perspective. The sheer  _scale_ of the things she'd done was overwhelming. She couldn't help but wonder if the world would be a better place without her in it.

Then she would go home to the mansion with Tony (and sometimes Pepper and Rhodey) and they'd drink hot chocolate and talk about anything else. Going from hearing about bloody violence to being with her family made Maggie feel dizzy. Part of her wished Tony wouldn't come to court, so he didn't see the extent of her sins, but she knew there was no keeping him away.

Shirley visited again on the weekend bearing an enormous Tupperware container full of baked goods. They didn't talk about the trial either, but Maggie could tell from the pinch between Shirley's brows that she'd been following it. Shirley told Maggie about growing up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, and how Bucky once snuck into the monkey enclosure at the Central Park Zoo to steal fruit for her, Nancy, and Rebecca – "he didn't have anything against the monkeys, but he saw that they were being fed better than his sisters and that just didn't sit right with him. And ooh, those bananas tasted like heaven."

Tony found out about Shirley's visits and figured out who she was, but he didn't say anything. He just made a face, stole one of Shirley's brownies, and let them get back to catching up.

When Davidson was done testifying, the sheer scope of the things Maggie had done for HYDRA had been laid bare. It was damning, and nothing had yet been said (save for the opening statement) that wasn't true.

But the prosecution wasn't close to being done.

 

* * *

 

"I found her on the floor with a hole in her throat. Her… her body was still warm, and I thought I could save her…"

 

"Just like that all our records were gone. The man they'd sent told us that the Wyvern was watching, in case we ever thought about going to the police, and when they left I swore she looked right at me from behind those red goggles–"

 

"– bones just  _snapped_ like they were made of glass–"

 

"Now we know that it wasn't an accident – the file states that the Wyvern injected Mr Wilkins with enough of the solution to make him near blackout drunk, then led him onto the street and into traffic. For nearly ten years it was ruled an accident."

 

"– tried to send messages through the blockade, but each transmission was intercepted and decoded no matter how hard we worked. They came for us on the third day. The Wyvern snapped my friends' necks in front of me, like it was easy. I'm only alive because they wanted me to tell the rest of the rebels trying to get through that it was hopeless."

 

"– just stood there, like a demon with red eyes."

 

* * *

 

They brought in witness after witness, each with a new and bloody tale to tell about the Wyvern. Each witness's testimony was accompanied by evidence – videos, photographs, murder weapons, bloody clothing. Sometimes just a line in a HYDRA mission report.

The Avengers were busy with some underground scientific research group causing trouble in the States, but they made a point to always have one of them or Pepper at Maggie's side in the trial. Sometimes she couldn't face them afterwards. They insisted that nothing they heard would change their minds about her, but she knew that once those images were in your head they didn't go away.

Maggie mostly stared at the desk, or watched the witnesses who took the stand. Occasionally she looked at the jury. She couldn't help but notice them; she was trained to watch people and they certainly did their share of watching her. One grey haired woman who sat near the back corner of the witness box cried at the drop of a hat. A man with glasses in the front row often turned away when the testimony or evidence got bloody. They tried to appear impartial but Maggie could read their surprise, curiosity, and horror in the way their eyes darted, or the way their faces crumpled before they brought up an impassive mask. And sometimes there was anger.

A few incarcerated HYDRA criminals testified. They glared at Maggie and she glared back. They said that they saw the Wyvern commit atrocities and that she was a stone cold killer. Andrea always cross-examined the HYDRA witnesses, and she was pretty good at taking them apart – she called out their lies and hypocrisy, and showed that they'd actually had very limited experience with the Wyvern during their time at HYDRA.

Maggie knew that the things she had done were sickening and unforgivable. But it was one thing to know it, and another to see the consequences sitting mere feet away from her.

 

* * *

 

"They burst into the executive meeting, seven armed men and the woman with the wings. They wanted Jeff – sorry, Jeff Geraldson, the company president. He'd stopped investing in this shell company, said he'd found some things that weren't quite above board. But they wanted him to reinvest. Jeff told them he didn't want anything to do with it anymore. He went to call security, but when he did he said there was no dial tone. Then…" His face went white. "Then the man who'd been speaking nodded. And the woman with the wings walked right up to Jeff and knocked him out of his chair. He fell to the ground and cried out, but he couldn't get up because the woman put her foot on his head. He looked up at her and then… and then he was dead."

The prosecutor turned to the jury. "I'll remind you that Ms Stark has extendable metal spurs in her heels. I'll also introduce Exhibit 72, though before I do I should warn the members of the gallery that it depicts a deceased person with a traumatic head wound."

A moment later the courtroom echoed with gasps and creaking wood as people turned away.

Mr Mallory turned back to the witness. "What happened after the woman killed Mr Geraldson?"

He glanced down. "She turned to me, then, and just  _stared_ at me with those red eyes." He sighed. "I agreed to help them. There wasn't anything else I could do."

Mr Mallory folded his hands. "Thank you, Mr Harwin. No further questions."

Andrea stood up and approached the witness. After greeting him she said: "tell me about the people in the room that day, Mr Harwin. Who was doing the talking?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You described a discussion between Mr Geraldson and the intruders. Who asked Mr Geraldson to reinvest in the company?"

"Uh…"

"Was it the Wyvern?"

"… No. It was the guy in charge."

"Caleb Balding," Andrea supplied, referring to one of the recently introduced exhibits, a S.H.I.E.L.D. employee identification photo of Caleb Balding. The exhibit after that showed that he'd been on HYDRA's payroll too.

"I didn't know that was his name at the time, but yes."

"So Mr Balding was the one discussing the company's affairs? He was the one attempting to intimidate Mr Geraldson into reinvesting?"

"Yes, he was the one talking."

"At any point that night did you hear the woman with the wings speak?"

"Uh… no. Not a word."

"You mention that Mr Balding  _nodded_  just before Mr Geraldson's death. Why does that detail stand out to you?"

"I suppose… I was watching him pretty closely, to see what his reaction was to Jeff turning him down."

"Would you say that Mr Balding nodded  _at_ anyone in particular?"

"Objection, your honor!" Mallory called from his desk, "The defense is leading the witness, Mr Harwin never stated that anyone nodded _at_ anyone."

"Sustained," said Moore, his face a stone wall.

"Apologies, your honor. Mr Harwin, what had the woman with the wings been doing up until she moved towards Mr Geraldson?"

"She was just standing near the doorway. I thought it was spooky how still she was."

"And did she move to attack Mr Geraldson before or after Mr Balding nodded?"

"After."

"How would you describe the winged woman's role in the group that attacked your company's meeting, Mr Harwin?"

"Her role?"

"Yes."

"Well…" he looked down, thinking about it. "I suppose… I guess it didn't feel like she was the leader, you know? The man, Balding, he was the one doing the talking. She didn't really feel like a part of the group. Like she'd been brought there just to kill Jeff."

"Thank you. Mr Harwin. I have one last question – how old would you say the woman with the wings was?"

He blinked.

Mallory stood up. "Objection, relevance?"

Moore eyed Mallory. "Overruled."

All eyes turned back to the witness. He shifted. "I had no idea. Her face was covered. But… this was August of 2001, so when I read all the news about the Wyvern, I realized that she'd have been fifteen at the time. I never would've guessed that."

A murmur went through the courtroom.

"Thank you, Mr Harwin. No further questions."

 

* * *

 

"Your name and date of birth?"

The witness was a man in dark blue military garb with medals on his chest. The lower half of his face was a mess of scar tissue, his mouth unrecognizable. He signed to his interpreter.

"Lance Brian Bartley, January 14th 1986, your honor," said the interpreter.

"And your occupation?"

"I'm an administrator at the Detroit Veterans Affairs Office. I was a Sergeant in the US Army before I was discharged on disability five years ago." After signing his answer, Bartley gestured at his face with a grimace.

Prosecutor Mallory stood and approached the witness box. "Mr Bartley, thank you for coming here today. Could you please describe the events that occurred on November 2nd, 2011?"

Bartley closed his eyes for a second, and then began. "I was in Afghanistan at the time, based out of Bagram Airfield. My platoon and I went out on a standard recon mission to check out some reports of unusual activity a few miles away. Our lieutenant went ahead with three soldiers, and when they came back they appeared disturbed. They said they'd seen soldiers with no recognizable uniform walking out of a building a few clicks ahead.

"We didn't have orders to engage so we turned back. But we only made it half a mile before we were attacked." Bartley's hands fell still for a moment, and he took a long breath through his nose. He began again. "I was in the jeep at the head of the convoy. I remember a shadow dropped over the vehicle. The driver, Sergeant Hanoway, shouted a warning and then something detonated underneath us. We flipped, and I blacked out for a few seconds. When I woke up I was in the middle of a battlefield."

Everyone in the courtroom listened in a hushed silence as Bartley's interpreter continued to speak.

"I was the only one left alive in my vehicle. I managed to climb out, and there was… there was this winged monster that was just  _tearing_ through my platoon. The air was full of screams and the sound of metal against bone. I barely saw what was attacking us at first – I managed to get a weapon and stand next to a fellow soldier, Corporal Williams, but the next thing I knew there was a rush of air and a flash of metal, and when I turned around he was bleeding out.

"Those of us that were left tried to find cover, but there was a sniper somewhere picking off those the flier couldn't get to." Bartley took another deep breath, his fingers shaking now.

"I got shot in the head." A gasp went through the courtroom. One of the jurors covered her mouth with her hand. "The bullet went through my right cheek, down through the roof of my mouth, tore through my tongue and then smashed through the teeth and mandible on the left side of my jaw. I can't talk, I can't eat except through a tube."

Silence fell. Prosecutor Mallory put up a copy of Bartley's initial X-rays. The bones in his jaw were just… shattered.

"What happened after you were shot?" Mallory asked softly.

Bartley's eyes, already gleaming with tears, screwed shut. He started to sign. "I fell to the ground. I felt like my head was on fire. But I… I could hear the screams dying out one by one. And I knew that there was a reason we were being killed, that we'd gone into an area and seen things we weren't meant to see. I'd done a few tours by then, I knew how it went. And I knew that they were going to check for survivors. I… I hid…" tears streamed down Bartley's cheeks. His interpreter's voice shook. "I hid under my fellow soldiers. My friends. They'd been shot or stabbed, and one of them had been blown in two, but I managed to wriggle under them and lie there, feeling their blood seep into my clothes. I heard a single set of footsteps and I… I was pretty delirious from the bloodloss at that point, but I remember two red eyes looking down at me. Then she was gone."

At that, Bartley looked up at Maggie. She didn't remember him. She remembered the pile of bodies, blood-soaked and still, she had nightmares about it. But she didn't remember him. She met Bartley's heart-wrenching gaze and she knew what he saw – red eyes, instead of brown. The face of death.

"I didn't move until dawn the next day when another platoon came through to pick up the bodies. I lay all night under my friends, feeling them lose heat until they were as cold as ice." Bartley shuddered, his mangled face twisted with pain. The courtroom was utterly silent.

Mallory took a deep breath. "Why do you think you're alive today, Mr Bartley?"

"I couldn't explain what happened. By the time they questioned me, after all the scans and surgeries, I'd convinced myself that what I'd seen was a hallucination – people couldn't fly. I told them it must have been a drone or some kind of small aircraft backed up by snipers. But when the HYDRA dump happened, my ex girlfriend – she was the only one I told about what I thought I saw – sent me a picture of the Wyvern flying in D.C. And as soon as I saw it I was… I was right back in that desert, seeing those wings and those red eyes coming out of the sky."

 

* * *

 

Rhys Anthony  
@rhyspect   
I can't take any more of this. I've heard enough. #thewyvern #wyverntrial 11:02 AM - 20 December 2016  582  3828 

 

* * *

CNN panel discussion: "At the start I thought the sheer number of murders attributed to Ms Stark was crazy. But we're hearing from so many people whose lives have been torn apart, and these are just the survivors. Survivors like Sergeant Bartley, without whom we would have no idea of the crimes Ms Stark committed. I can't imagine how many more victims are out there." 

 

* * *

 

 _The Daily Bugle_  Article:  _Death and Destruction: The Stark Legacy._

 

* * *

 

December 23rd, 2016  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

"Kayla Roper. Analyst at the National Security Agency."

"Good morning Ms Roper. Now despite your credentials, you're not here as an expert witness but an eyewitness, correct?"

"That's correct." Ms Roper was a straight-backed woman in a crisp suit, her forehead marked with a small white scar.

"What was your previous job?"

"I used to work as a junior analyst for S.H.I.E.L.D.," she explained. "I was at the Triskelion on the day it fell."

A few eyebrows went up around the courtroom.

"Please describe your encounters with the Wyvern that day."

"Well, things had been busy at S.H.I.E.L.D. for a few days what with Insight going live soon, and Captain Rogers… well, at the time we thought he'd had something to do with Nick Fury's death, and went rogue." Maggie's eyes dropped to her desk as she recalled crouching on a dark rooftop, whispering into her comms:  _target identified. Southwest corner._

Nick Fury's name was on her list of victims.

Roper kept talking. "We started getting word of a massive battle on an overpass in metropolitan D.C. – we really had no idea what was going on. We were all searching for Captain Rogers, but after that overpass fight things got very quiet and we weren't getting a lot of direction from above. Our efforts were redirected back to Insight. Looking back, that happened because my bosses were HYDRA and they didn't want us looking into the assets who'd fought Captain Rogers and the others.

"But I… I could feel that something wasn't right, so I went over the footage from the fight. I saw some shaky images of a man with a metal arm, and a woman with metal wings."

"These are the images you're referring to?" Mallory asked as a few stills from the overpass fight appeared on the screen. There was a pretty clear shot of the Wyvern in flight over the highway, a gun in each hand. He hit play on a short video which showed her swooping overhead in a scream of engines, spraying down gunfire. The civilian filming screamed, and the video cut out.

"Yes," Roper said. "I'd been ordered to focus on other things but the footage reminded me of a few whispers I'd heard a few years back about the Winter Soldier and the Wyvern."

"What kind of whispers?"

"Nothing concrete, nothing that ever got written down. But enough to make you fear what was out there."

"How was the Wyvern described?"

"As a monster," Roper said frankly, her face composed. "She was… it wasn't a person that I heard about. It was a horror story."

"Thank you. That wasn't your only brush with the Wyvern that day though, was it?"

"No. Once Captain Rogers outed HYDRA things went downhill fast. I was just an analyst, and a junior one at that, but some fellow recruits and I heard that the S.H.I.E.L.D. air support crew had all been taken out. We knew of a couple of Quinjets stored on the other side of the building and a few of us had done some flight simulator training, so we took up two Quinjets to help… to help Captain Rogers." Her face hardened, as if daring anyone to challenge her.

But they didn't. "What did you see once you were in the air?" Mallory asked.

"I was co-piloting for a fellow recruit, Gregory Silt. It was chaos up there, missiles and artillery, and that was before the Helicarriers started shooting at each other. We flew up to one of the Helicarriers just as the Wyvern dove out of its broken hull. We'd seen her engaging with the Falcon earlier, protecting HYDRA's version of Insight, so we engaged.

"The second we fired on her she resorted to evasive manoeuvres. After half a minute she started making passes against our Quinjet – at first we didn't know what she was doing. I just remember seeing her red eyes staring down into the cockpit each time she flew over us, and being sure we were going to die. We eventually realized that she was trying to disable our engines with blades attached to her feet – she was successful with the other Quinjet, which then didn't have enough power to stay in the air and had to land.

"We tried to avoid her, but after a few more passes she threw a grenade into our engine turbine and we went down. Greg and I got out in one piece, save for this scar." She tapped her forehead.

"What did the Wyvern do after that?"

"I didn't see, we were too busy bracing for landing."

"You were the last S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to see the Wyvern in action that day, would you say that's a fair statement?"

"I would."

"And she fought against S.H.I.E.L.D.'s forces until the last?"

"That's correct."

"Thank you Ms Roper." Mallory turned around and cast a glance at the defense desk. "Your witness."

Andrea got up for this witness, wearing a pair of reading glasses. She nodded to Ms Roper and then folded her hands in front of her. "Ms Roper, are you dead?"

A titter went through the courtroom. Maggie bristled.

Roper cocked an eyebrow. "No."

Andrea nodded once more. "This court has seen countless evidence that the Wyvern was fully capable of taking down an airborne aircraft – lethally – in a matter of seconds. But you're saying that she made multiple passes along your aircraft in an attempt to ground it without killing anyone on board?"

Ms Roper blinked, and then turned to look at Maggie. "I… I suppose so. Yes."

"You state she used a grenade to take out your main engine. If the Wyvern was armed – with grenades no less – wouldn't her time have been better served using said weapons against the crew members?"

"Yes, it would."

"Did the Wyvern make any attempt to attack the Quinjet once it stopped attacking her?"

Ms Roper sat back in her seat, eyes wide. "No."

"Thank you," said Andrea. "That will be all."

Maggie ducked her head, suddenly conscious of many people's eyes on her. She could sense the confusion in the courtroom – her lawyers had never questioned a witness to Maggie's crimes like that before, doubting the Wyvern's lethal intent. She could feel them all wondering:  _what made that day different?_

 

* * *

 

WHiH World News Report: "Ms Roper's testimony ends just in time to break for Christmas. The prosecution is expected to call some expert witnesses after the holidays but until then… this is going to be a dark Christmas for a lot of people."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The zoo story belongs to my gran, whose brothers stole food from the monkeys at Sydney's Taronga Zoo in the Great Depression (pretty sure they didn't share with their sister though).
> 
> Speaking of depression I know I probably brought your mood way down with this chapter (sorry), but please kudos, subscribe, and drop a comment! I love hearing from you guys :)


	62. Chapter 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS. THE AVENGERS 4 TRAILER. IS OUT. GO SEE IT.
> 
> I'm deceased, I knew I wasn't ready for it and dang it I wasn't ready. If you want to scream about it with me shoot me a message here or I'm princesszorldo on Tumblr, but tbh I'm not ready for anything more than like... shocked screaming. (also did anyone else see Shuri on the pics of the dead because I did and now I' d). Also who saw the Captain Marvel trailer? I'm ready for her to kick some serious old lady ass.
> 
> Now back to the fic: Well it seems you're all depressed. But the general consensus is that you want to give Maggie a big hug and tell her everything will be ok, which I love you guys for! But I can't promise that things are going to get better yet.
> 
> lil warning for swearing.

 

24th December, 2016  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Christmas fell on a gloomy weekend. The Avengers Facility gleamed with twinkling lights and vibrant Christmas trees, but the mood within didn't feel as much like a holiday as it did a funeral. There was a big Avengers staff party with all the agents, analysts, and scientists, but Maggie didn't go. They deserved a party after spending the year protecting the world, they didn't need a mass murderer there.

Rhodey had plans to visit his family on Christmas morning so the Avengers gathered in their common room on Christmas Eve for a celebration. Maggie almost didn't go to that either, but Pepper appeared in her room, tossed a red and green Christmas sweater at her and dragged her to the common room.

Maggie found herself sitting on one of the couches by the Christmas tree with a paper crown on her head, drinking eggnog, as Bing Crosby's  _I'll Be Home For Christmas_ crooned from the speakers. The song – both the singer and the lyrics – echoed in the deep, aching part of herself that hadn't gone away since that frozen day in Siberia.

The couch shifted, and she glanced to her left to see Tony sitting beside her. He'd escaped the Christmas sweater treatment, dressed as nicely as ever in an expensive suit, but there was an ever-present furrow in his brow.

"Sorry for ruining Christmas," Maggie murmured.

He put an arm around her shoulders. "You haven't ruined Christmas, Magrinch."

She gestured at the common room. Rhodey and Pepper stood by the enormous Christmas tree, murmuring in subdued tones. Happy frowned down at his phone, and Vision stood by the dark windows, looking out at the thin layer of snow on the lawns. The atmosphere in the room was subdued, and the empty spaces echoed with absences.

"Behold," she muttered.

Tony sighed. "It's not just the trial. It's the first Christmas after… y'know."

Her eyes squeezed shut. "Right. Sorry, I didn't even–"

"You've got a lot on your mind, I don't blame you."

She sighed and leaned in to him. "What was Christmas like last year?"

"Well it wasn't all sleigh bells and merrymaking. I knew you were out there somewhere. But we… we celebrated together. The Avengers. We all split off to go to other places afterwards, but on Christmas Eve we were together. It was…" his face twisted, and Maggie's heart ached at the conflict in his eyes. "It was good."

She could tell she wasn't going to get more than that out of him. After a wistful moment, Tony raised an eyebrow at her.

She closed her eyes. "Last Christmas I was in Croatia." She remembered it like it was yesterday instead of a year ago: she and Bucky had bought a tiny Christmas tree for their safehouse, one that they could donate before they moved on, and exchanged gifts. They had gone out to see Christmas in the city, left footprints in the snow, and Maggie had kissed Bucky beside a fountain ablaze with lights. She remembered thinking  _for this night, I am unafraid._

She sighed, and Tony squeezed her until Pepper called to him and he got up to speak to her. Maggie watched him with her chin propped in her hand. Pepper whispered something in his ear and he grinned, his face lighting up as he looked down at his fiancé. Vision wandered from the window to the Christmas tree.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Maggie – this could be the last Christmas she spent outside a jail cell. Her heart pounded, but the thought had her standing up and walking toward the others. If this was the last chance she got to celebrate Christmas with her family, she was determined to enjoy it.

 

The rest of the night passed in a less somber mood – they ate dinner together, trading jokes and teasing one another, and Pepper told the story of Christmas three years ago, when Tony had bought her an enormous stuffed bunny, invited a terrorist to blow up their mansion, and then blew up all his suits. It should have been depressing but wasn't, Pepper's endearing retelling mixed with Tony's snarky additions leaving the others at the table laughing.

 

On Christmas morning the Avengers – sans Rhodey – gathered once more to exchange gifts. Everyone seemed to have silently agreed not to discuss anything trial or crime-fighting related, so the morning passed in a tense kind of peace.

Maggie had never bought presents for so many people before. She'd also given presents to her lawyers (a scalp massager for the headache-prone Andrea and a fuzzy scarf for Diego), and Shirley (a copy of one of the photobooth photos with she and Bucky beaming at the camera, with strict instructions not to show it to anyone under any circumstances. Shirley had taken the present with shining eyes).

Her presents to the others seemed to be well received. Tony was stubbornly saving his presents for last, so Maggie was surprised when midway through the festivities he plucked a present wrapped in red paper from the lower branches of the tree and offered it to her.

At her raised eyebrow, Tony explained: "It's not from me. It got dropped off by a little spider earlier this week."

Maggie's eyebrows shot up, and then her heart swelled. She sometimes saw Peter at the facility on the weekends, when he dropped by for suit updates or to give reports. She'd usually been run off her feet and emotionally drained, but Peter never failed to cheer her up when he stopped to say hi and chat for a while.

"I didn't get him anything," she realized, frowning down at the box.

Tony waved a hand. "He said you gave him that Rubik's cube a couple months ago. Go on, open it – I wanted to scan it to see what the kid got you, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. said that would be unethical."

Smiling, Maggie tore open the paper to reveal a jigsaw puzzle of the New York skyline from above, the skyscrapers and river gleaming in an orange sunset. She beamed. "He's a good kid."

 

Once everyone else had exchanged presents, Tony finally let them open the ones from him. Happy, Vision, and Pepper all opened their gifts and thanked him. But those were the last ones under the tree.

Once the tree was empty, Tony clapped his hands and announced: "F.R.I.D.A.Y., initiate the North Pole Protocol."

At that a section of the sleek grey floor opened up with a hiss, revealing a metal podium that lifted into view laden with a  _pile_ of presents wrapped in red and gold paper.

Pepper glanced up at the ceiling, searching for strength. Vision and Happy exchanged a glance, and Maggie stared open mouthed at Tony.

"What are those?" she managed to sputter.

He waved to the raised podium of gifts like a ringmaster. "Your presents," he said, as if that was obvious. "All twenty six of them."

It took her a moment to catch on. When she did, her hand flew up to her mouth and she stared at Tony with round eyes.  _Twenty six Christmases._

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pepper smiling as she glanced between the two of them.

" _Tony_ ," Maggie managed to say after a long moment. "I only got you one present–"

"So I'm clearly better than you," he said with a grin. "We both knew that, this is just proof."

She scoffed at the words, but she was still taken aback at the gesture. Vision put a hand on her shoulder.

"Well c'mon Marshmallow, get cracking," Tony said, waving at the gifts again. "This is your Dudley Dursley moment."

She rolled her eyes but did as he said, getting started on unwrapping her presents.

He'd bought her all kinds of things from electronics, to decorations for her room, to books, to clothes. She laughed as she unwrapped it all, but a dark corner of her mind whispered that she didn't deserve this. That it wouldn't last.

But that dark corner fell silent when she reached her last present. This one wasn't wrapped in shiny paper but in faded, yellowing newspaper, tied up with a frayed electrical cable. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she glanced up at Tony.

"Is this…"

He was sitting by Pepper now, and she could see from the shadows in his eyes that her suspicions about this present were right. He nodded. "Yeah. That one's been waiting a long time for you to unwrap it, Maggot."

 _Twenty five years._ A hush fell as Maggie carefully pulled away the frayed wire and peeled open the aged paper. When she saw what was inside, her eyes welled with tears.

It was a pilot's cap – navy blue, with a winged star emblazoned on the front. It smelled like dust and years, but the fabric felt strong under her fingers.

Tony cleared his throat. "Saw that lying around when I visited Rhodey's airbase back in '91. I… re-purposed it. I meant to give it to you before…" he swallowed. "Before you left. But I forgot."

Maggie jammed the cap on her head, and in seconds had bounded across the room to wrap her arms around her brother.

"Thank you," she whispered into his ear as the others in the room cheered and toasted each other with their coffee mugs.

 

* * *

 

That night Pepper climbed into bed beside Tony, who absently played with the Chinese finger trap he'd gotten in his Christmas cracker. He still wore his crumpled Christmas hat, though it was nearly torn down the middle. Pepper smiled fondly at him until she noticed the distant look in his eyes and the furrow in his brow.

She sighed. "You did a good thing today, Tony."

He glanced up with raised eyebrows.

"With Maggie," she elaborated. She deserves to be spoiled." Maggie had gone to her room that night with cheeks flushed from laughter and a gleam in her eyes. Pepper hadn't seen that look on her face in a while.

"I know," Tony murmured, gazing at his fingers trapped in the bamboo toy.

Pepper rolled onto her side to face him. "You're worried about the trial."

He snorted. "Aren't you?"

"Of course I am. But Kemp and Martinez haven't given up, far from it, and I trust them. We both know Maggie's not responsible for the things she did, and I'm sure they'll prove it."

Tony still wouldn't look up from his trapped fingers. His face was dark. "The system doesn't always work, Pepper. It's meant to protect people like Maggie, but… HYDRA made her do some goddamn  _terrible_ things, and as far as the public and the jury are concerned she's the only one left to blame. Fear and anger are pretty powerful."

Pepper opened her mouth to contradict him, but he turned to meet her gaze and she knew she couldn't deny the truth of his words. She'd spent years running his company, even before she was CEO, and she knew better than most that what was  _right_ didn't always come to pass. She settled for smoothing a hand over Tony's chest, where the arc reactor used to be.

 _Proof that Tony Stark has a heart_ , she mused.

"I know you're not going to like this," she said, "because you're  _you_ and you need facts and figures to feel confident in anything, but…" she bit her lip. "Things look bad now, really bad, but I have faith that Kemp and Martinez are going to do right by Maggie. They're going to  _fight_ for her, and they're not the only ones. You and I both know that anyone who's met Maggie and gotten to know her will fight to help her. Because she deserves it." Pepper heaved herself up on one elbow to press her lips to Tony's forehead. He wrinkled his brow, just to be annoying, but she felt some of his anxiety seep away. "She's got a good team on her side. And a wonderful brother."

Tony freed himself from the finger trap and looked down at his hands. "That might not be enough."

Pepper dropped her forehead against his shoulder. "It will be. It has to be."

 

* * *

 

Medical Bay, Wakanda

Shuri was walking through the medical bay when she heard the voice.

"… could've given me some warning that I was gonna be keeping an eye on someone as stubborn as  _you_ –"

The voice emanated from one of the long-term stay rooms, which Shuri definitely wasn't used to hearing voices coming from, so she backtracked until she stood in the open doorway.

It was Sergeant Barnes' room. The one-armed super soldier remained in his glass tube, obscured by the ice frosting the inside of the glass. But Shuri knew that if you looked just right, you could see and his closed eyes and shadowed jaw through the ice. Monitors beside the cryo-tube glowed with steady bio-readouts.

Sergeant Barnes wasn't alone. Someone had set up a couple of chairs in the corner of the room (Shuri suspected her brother, the big softie), where one could sit and look at the frosted glass for a while. One of these chairs was currently occupied by the large figure of Captain Rogers – he and the Black Widow had arrived in the early hours of the morning with intel about a terrorist group that Wakanda might be interested in stopping (which Shuri wasn't supposed to know about, but she couldn't help it if her finger slipped and she tapped into council meeting audio).

Captain Rogers was still wearing his dark-blue uniform (which Shuri thought was a little dramatic what with the torn-off star and the  _slightly_ rolled up sleeves, but she supposed nonagenarians were entitled to their flights of fancy), his hands on his knees and his head tipped back as if looking up at his frozen friend's face. His voice seemed loud in the normally quiet room.

"No matter what happens I'll look out for her, Buck," he said. He sounded exhausted, and his voice was hard with forced confidence. "I'm sorry I couldn't keep her from being dragged through the mud like this, but she's strong and we're not gonna let anything happen to her. And we're gonna get you fixed up, get your head right, and we'll help her with that too." He sighed, and his head dropped. When he next spoke, the forced confidence was gone. "Feels like I can't keep anyone safe, these days."

There was a long, awful silence. Not even the medical machines beeped – Wakanda was beyond such rudimentary technology. Shuri didn't dare breathe.

"You always liked Christmas," Captain Rogers eventually said in a lower voice. "Family, food, gifts… drinking," he added, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "I know you got me drunk on that eggnog that one time on purpose, you jerk, you wanted me to make a fool of myself in front of your sisters–"

Shuri suddenly realized that she was being a huge eavesdropping dick, and abruptly backed away. Her heart sank with every step.

She'd been watching the Maggie Stark trial along with the rest of the world, but having read the things she had in the Québec data she was  _angry_ that no one else saw what she did – that Maggie Stark was just another victim, not a victimizer. But there wasn't much she could do for the woman other than work on the insidious, lurking trigger words that were rooted so deep that even Shuri was struggling with finding a cure.

Shuri sighed and glanced over her shoulder at the med bay before she left. She couldn't imagine how she'd feel if the only way she could talk to T'Challa was through a plate of frozen glass while he slept on, oblivious.

She doubled her pace.  _Well, guess who's working through Christmas_? She had a playlist of terrible dubstep remixes of Christmas music to keep her entertained as she worked, and since opening their borders Wakanda had received a lot of gifts in the form of food – she would have more than her fair share of weird and wonderful snacks.

She went back to her lab and her endless research into the inner workings of Sergeant Barnes' mind.

_We're so close._

 

* * *

 

December 26, 2016  
Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, New York City

The next day saw Maggie and her family back in court again save for Vision, who stayed at the facility. The brief spark of optimism that Christmas had brought was washed away in the cold light of morning on the courthouse steps.

Inside, Judge Moore said that he hoped everyone had had a happy holiday period, though his face showed that he doubted it. Then he called up the next witness.

 

"Dr Wells," said Mallory, looking over his glasses. "Exhibits 45 and 46 show us that Ms Stark has an incredibly high IQ. Now, you've conducted research into the link between high IQ and criminal activity, could you please explain that for us?"

The doctor, a burly man in his late sixties with a receding ginger hairline, cleared his throat. "My team and I realized that a lot of studies had been done on the link between  _low_ IQ and crime, but not the upper end of the spectrum. We studied a group of adults with an unusually high IQ – over 140."

"What did you find?"

"We found that this group reported much higher crime rates than our control group of people with more normal IQ scores."

"What kinds of crimes?"

"Small things like copyright violations and trespassing, but also more serious crimes like arson, kidnapping, and armed robbery. Even murder. This group was also more likely to get away with their crimes."

"Are you saying that all smart people are criminals?"

The doctor smiled. "Certainly not. But we found that there is a threshold after which a high IQ becomes a risk factor for criminal behavior." At the defense desk, Maggie looked over her shoulder at Tony. He waggled his eyebrows and she turned around – if he wasn't going to take this seriously, she wouldn't look at him.

"Why is that?" Mallory asked.

"The highly gifted experience more isolation, bullying, and difficulty in forming attachments, which are all risk factors for criminal behavior. Also, they feel that society's rules don't apply to them."

Mallory nodded. "Now, you've examined various descriptions and reports about Ms Stark as a child – I'm referring to exhibits 110 through 119, which the jury now have before them." Maggie eyed the exhibits. One of them was a transcript of Mr Jarvis's eulogy at her funeral.

Mallory continued: "Do you see signs of what you've described – isolation, bullying, difficulty in forming attachments – there?"

"I do," Wells agreed. Behind her, Maggie heard Tony inhale sharply. "Here we have letters from teachers explaining that Ms Stark did not integrate well with students, that she didn't form friendships, that she didn't engage with classes."

"What does this suggest to you?"

"Well, it suggests to me a highly intelligent, isolated child with no meaningful social integration. And the material does not suggest any form of punishment or repercussions for her behavior, so I can only infer that this child, a child of privilege, likely felt entitled and exempt from rules. That is very rocky ground for such a gifted individual to begin life from."

Maggie dug her fingers into her seat, pointedly staring at the desk and not at the doctor. She could feel every sideways glance and unkind remark that had been made to her during her brief time at school rising to the surface.  _Smart, snobby, stuck-up Stark._

"Do you have any other remarks to make about the defendant's early psychology?" Mallory asked.

"I do. If I saw these early criminal behavior indicators in a child, I would be concerned. I would be  _more_ concerned if I heard – as this document indicates–"

"That's Exhibit 117, a transcript of a former Stark Industries' employee's testimony," Mallory supplied.

"Yes. It indicates that as a child, Ms Stark was drawn to creating and watching explosions. This stands out to me, as arson is one pillar of the Macdonald triad, also known as the homicidal triad–"

"You have got to be  _fucking_ kidding me."

The court gasped. Maggie turned around and stared at Tony, who at some point had gotten to his feet and was glaring at doctor Wells, his dark eyes burning.

"Mr Stark, please return to your seat and remain silent," Judge Moore said, eyeing the billionaire with an unimpressed look on his face.

Tony tore his eyes away from Wells and looked at Andrea and Diego. "You're going to let him spout that bullshit?"

"Tony,  _sit down,_ " Maggie murmured. Everyone was staring. She could sense Judge Moore's patience waning, and if Tony got kicked out she didn't know what she'd do without his vivid, sturdy presence behind her. Rhodey looked similarly furious, but he tugged at Tony's sleeve to get him to sit down. Tony met Maggie's eyes, scowled, and then finally sat.

"Thank you," she mouthed, and turned around.

"If that's quite all," Moore said, one eyebrow raised, "then you may continue Doctor Wells."

And so the doctor did. After describing all the ways in which Maggie's childhood indicated she would become a mass murderer, Mallory directed the doctor to change tacks.

"Doctor, you've reviewed the evidence for each crime on the charge list for this defendant. Tell me about the kind of person who would commit these crimes."

"Objection, your honor!" called Diego. "This witness has been called to discuss his studies into the link between IQ and crime-"

Mallory cut in: "Doctor Wells is a forensic psychologist, your honor, I assure you this is within his scope of expertise."

Moore glanced between the two lawyers. "Objection overruled," he decided. "Carry on, doctor."

"Right. Well, the person who could commit this number of crimes, with such a high level of violence and organisation but no visible sign of emotion at the scene… they wouldn't have a conscience. They'd be psychopathic, or at least sociopathic: incapable of feeling empathy, highly intelligent and organised, with considerable superficial charm. They would also be a skilled manipulator. If I saw this kind of crime scene, I'd be telling law enforcement that they were looking for a cold-blooded serial killer, or a contract killer."

"Thank you, Dr Wells," Mallory said with a nod. "No further questions."

Andrea got to her feet before the judge even said another word. As soon as he gave the go ahead, she turned on the witness. "Dr Wells, let's talk about your study of the high-IQ adults. Did you and your team analyse police reports? Crime rates? Court documents?"

"No," the doctor replied.

"Then what evidence did you base your study on? How did you find the crime rates for that group?"

He frowned. "The crimes were self-reported."

"Did you verify these self-reported facts?"

"… No."

"I see. And – I have your study here, did you write it?"

"Of course I did," the doctor replied, disgruntled.

"So these are your own words then. Could you please read the highlighted section, here?"

Wells took the sheaf of paper from Andrea and ran his eyes over the page. He barely managed to conceal a scowl.

"Any time, Dr Wells," Andrea said, folding her hands in front of her.

He cleared his throat. " _While these findings are surprising, it must be stressed that the crime rate in this IQ bracket is far lower than amongst individuals with low IQs._ "

"Thank you, Dr Wells. I also have here eight other subsequent studies on the subject of crime rates amongst high-IQ individuals. Are you aware of these studies? Have you read them?"

Dr Wells eyed the list of studies. "Yes, I've read them."

"Would you be so kind as to summarize their general findings?"

He gritted his teeth. "They found few signs of a significantly higher crime rate amongst that IQ bracket."

"I see. So even though other studies have found different results, and your own study indicates that its results are to be taken with a grain of salt, you've made some pretty strong remarks about my client. I'm curious, Dr Wells – when it comes to other notable geniuses such as Einstein, Hawking, or Savant, would you be so cavalier about labeling them psychopaths and mass murderers?"

Mallory stood up. "Your honor, she's arguing with the witness."

"Watch yourself, Mrs Kemp," Moore warned.

Andrea smiled. Maggie's eyes widened at the sight – Andrea hardly ever smiled, and when she did it wasn't this sharp-edged flash of teeth. "Certainly, your honor," she said, then turned back to the witness. "Now, Dr Wells. Have you ever had a conversation with Margaret Stark?"

"No," the doctor said. His skin was tinged red.

"I see. Now I'm sure that you're used to working in the dark, Dr Wells, drawing inferences from crime scenes. But say there are two doctors: one has seen only the crime scene photos, and the other has spoken with the individual in question and had numerous consultations with them in the context of evaluating their mental health. Which doctor would you say is more qualified to make an assessment of the individual's state of mind?"

Wells' forehead was shiny now. "The second one," he grumbled.

"I see. No further questions, your honor." Andrea turned her back on Dr Wells and paced back behind the defense desk. Maggie eyed her warily.

"I'm glad you're on my side," she murmured as Dr Wells was led out.

Andrea smiled. "You should be."

 

* * *

 

That afternoon Maggie left the courthouse, already bracing for the crowd she was about to walk through. She didn't think she'd ever get used to it: the flashing, snapping cameras, the shouted questions and abuse, the flashes of faces. For someone used to working in the shadows, it was jarring.

Sure enough the volume on the courthouse steps tripled as soon as she emerged from the courthouse door. She focused on breathing and kept her gaze fixed ahead. Her lawyers, Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper pressed closer around her and they began the slow push through the crowd toward the car Happy had idling on the curb, as Andrea and Diego periodically responded to the shouted questions from reporters. People waved signs. Maggie could feel Tony's shoulder pressed against hers, warm and reassuring.

She wasn't sure what made her look up at the flash of movement to her right, but one moment she looked up, and the next she moved.

Maggie sprang into the crowd. Someone shouted in alarm. A gunshot rang out across the stone steps.

In an instant the shouting crowd burst out in screams and dove for cover, dozens of people hunching on the steps and pushing into each other in their fear. One of the TV cameras, which had followed Maggie's sudden movement, filmed her as she crushed a semi-automatic pistol in her hand like it was made of paper and tossed it aside. Her other hand pressed a man's face against the courthouse steps, and her knee dug into his back. The man, bearded with a dark cap on his head, cried out in pain.

Seconds later the on-duty police officers waded through the crowd and glanced from the man on the ground to Maggie, her face hard and her limbs unyielding as she restrained him. In the moments before the police took the man away and Maggie was rushed by her lawyers, the single standing cameraman zoomed in on her shoulder, where her white blouse bloomed with a scarlet stain.

 

* * *

 

_BREAKING: MARGARET STARK SHOT ON COURTHOUSE STEPS._

 

* * *

 

"Ow," Maggie complained, as a doctor probed the hole in her shoulder. The doctor murmured an apology then kept poking.

She sat on the edge of a hospital bed in a private room, trying not to let her instinctive fear of white walls and sterile equipment make the pain radiating from her shoulder any worse. The sheer number of people packed into the room with her wasn't helping: Tony stood right over the doctor's shoulder, his face white and his breath coming fast enough to make her concerned he was about to have a panic attack. His hands were still stained with her blood – he'd been the one to put pressure on her wound until the ambulance arrived, begging her to  _stay awake, Maggie, oh god,_ while she'd reassured him in increasing annoyance that she wasn't going anywhere.

Pepper and Rhodey weren't doing too much better, alternating between crossing their arms and tapping their feet, their faces pinched with worry. Vision had flown all the way from the Avengers Facility. They were all at the edges of the room, though, making space for the doctors and nurses, Maggie's anxious lawyers, and the police officers there to interview her.

Maggie concealed another wince as the doctor swabbed her exit wound – the bullet had bounced off the Adamantium coating her bones and ricocheted out of the top of her shoulder. She'd lost some blood, but she'd definitely had worse wounds before.

Maggie gestured for the lead detective to continue with his questions.

"Did the shooter say anything?" he asked.

"No." Maggie shifted to give the doctor better access, holding the ruined remains of her blouse across her chest. "Well he was yelling a bit when I broke his hand and held him down, but he didn't  _say_ anything."

"Why do you think he attempted to assassinate you?"

Tension crackled through the room at that question, but Maggie frowned.

"He wasn't attempting to assassinate me." She looked up and took in everyone's disbelieving faces. "Wait, you all think he was trying to shoot  _me_?"

Rhodey cleared his throat. "Well you kinda got shot, Maggie…" he said, gesturing to the bloody hole in her shoulder.

" _Yeah_ , because I got in the way." She looked around again, but was met with nothing but surprise. Her brow furrowed. "He was aiming for Tony."

There was a stunned silence, and then everyone turned to look at Tony. His eyes were wide.

Maggie shrugged, then winced as the movement brought a fresh bolt of pain lancing from her shoulder. "I know what I saw. I looked up, saw the gun pointed at Tony, saw the guy  _looking_ at Tony. And I stopped him." She'd barely noticed what she was doing until it was done – her instincts had taken over and all she'd thought was  _disarm and disable,_  until it was done.

Tony blinked, reached up to pinch his nose, then saw the blood on his fingers and thought better of it. "Maggie,  _shit_ ," he breathed. "You… you can't take bullets for me!"

"You're right, next time I'm not going to let them get off a shot at all."

Tony gaped at her, his pupils still narrow with panic. One of the police officers cleared his throat.

"Well, uh… Mr Stark, can you think of a reason why someone would want to shoot you?"

At that, the Avengers in the room shared a  _look._ Maggie, wincing as her shoulder got poked at, watched them with keen eyes – they made knowing eye contact with one another, then nodded imperceptibly. Vision turned to the officers.

"It sounds like this is an Avengers matter," he said. "We'll look into it, officers."

The police officers shared their own glance.

Maggie opened her mouth, eyes darting. "I–"

" _No_ ," Tony interrupted, "Whatever you're about to say, no."

She scowled.

 

After a few more questions, the police cast one last disbelieving look at the gathering inside the hospital room and then left. The doctors finished dressing Maggie's wound and explained that with her enhanced healing factor she didn't need to stay. They told her how to take care of the wound, double checked that she didn't want pain medication – "it's not gonna work, sorry" – then cleared out as well. As far as gunshot wounds went it wasn't bad – two exit wounds and a cracked clavicle, some blood loss but nothing she hadn't been through before.

Maggie sighed, squeezing her eyes shut and rolling her head from side to side. Between slipping back into combat mode and getting shot, her muscles were rigid with tension. She felt a hand rest, feather light, on her uninjured shoulder and opened her eyes to see Pepper looking down at her with tears tracking down her cheeks.

"I'm okay," she said unnecessarily, stricken that everyone was freaking out over her. She put her hand over Pepper's. "Really, I've been shot before and this is, like, nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing," Pepper protested. Maggie glanced at her shoulder, bound in white gauze, with her left arm immobilized against her side in a sling. As she looked, she suddenly noticed that Andrea and Diego were murmuring to each other in the corner.

She picked up on a few words: "– ask for an adjournment right away–"

"What?" she blurted out, drawing everyone's attention. "No, we're not" – she shifted so she could see Andrea and Diego better – "we're not adjourning the trial, don't do that."

Diego's eyebrows shot up. "Maggie–"

"I'll be fine! I've done much harder things while shot than sitting in a room doing nothing."

From the shock and disbelief on everyone's faces, Maggie knew they were all about to start arguing with her. But she wasn't going to back down on this.

 

* * *

 

Once she'd convinced her lawyers not to change the court schedule, Maggie went home to the mansion in a car with Happy, Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper. Each small bump in the road made her shoulder flare with pain, but she didn't let it show on her face. Happy kept muttering about  _lax courthouse security_ and eyeing every car on the road as if it contained assassins, so he wasn't concentrating very hard on smooth driving.

Tony hadn't spoken since the hospital room. He looked wrecked, but he kept anxiously hovering over her as if she'd drop dead any minute. And he kept glancing at her, opening his mouth, then closing it again and looking away.

Maggie would normally be endeared by his obvious worry, but the Avengers had shared a  _look._ "You know why that guy tried to shoot you," she said. Rhodey's head jumped up.

Tony whipped around. "Maggie, that is  _so_ not the point-"

"Who was he? Why did he want to kill you?"

"Maggie, we're going to handle it. You've got enough on your plate right now and–"

"– if someone's trying to kill you then I want to–"

"– there's not a lot you can do about it anyway!" he finished, gesticulating wildly.

Maggie's eyes sparked and she straightened in her seat, but Rhodey put a hand on her uninjured shoulder with a sigh. "I know you worry about him Maggie, but we can deal with this. Trust us." Pepper watched the three of them with a perpetual frown creasing her brows, and one hand on Tony's knee.

Maggie sank back in her seat, winced at a fresh bolt of pain from her soldier, and scowled. Tony was still shifting restlessly so after a long moment of sulking she poked him in the side. "Say what you want to say."

He let out an explosive sigh. "You're so stupid!" He said. "First you go and get shot–" at Pepper's disapproving glare he added: "thank you, by the way. But after that most people would stay in the hospital and take a few days to recover, Maggie!" His voice was getting higher and higher. "So… so stupid," he finished, shaking his head.

"Nah," she replied, and winked at him. "I've just got a chip on my shoulder."

The affronted look Tony shot her made her laugh, and even though it hurt she didn't stop, because out of all the awful things she'd been through over the past few weeks, getting shot to save her brother's life didn't even bear a mention.

 

* * *

 

No one could quite believe that Maggie was going back into court the day after she got shot on national TV. When she showed up the next morning in a sling, she climbed out of the car to find that the courthouse steps were absolutely  _packed._

"D'you reckon they're hoping someone else will try to shoot me?" Tony asked curiously, and Maggie rolled her eyes.

"Let them try," she said, then smirked at him. "I've got another shoulder."

That wiped the amused look from his face. They walked side-by-side up the stairs, past the step that had been stained with Maggie's blood only yesterday, and into the courthouse. People still shouted, and news crews jostled to get a shot of her face and her sling.

Maggie kept her head high.

 

* * *

 

"Mrs Kemp," said Judge Moore, his eyebrows raised behind his glasses, "Are you sure your client is fit to sit through a full day of court today?"

Andrea spread her hands. "Your honor, my client is determined not to slow down proceedings."

At that, Moore looked from Andrea to Maggie. "Ms Stark? No one would blame you for taking a few days off. You got  _shot_ ," he added, as if she hadn't noticed.

Maggie nodded. "I'll be okay, your honor. Thank you."

"Well alright then." With a sigh, Moore motioned for court to begin.

 

* * *

 

"Mr Miller, in your professional opinion as a senior financial analyst at the NSA, what do these transactions tell us?"

"Well it's complicated," said the grim-faced analyst. "My team and I followed each small transaction to a series of shell accounts. They were expertly hidden, but we uncovered them with time and effort."

"We appreciate your diligent work, Mr Miller," Mallory said. "What did you find?"

"We found that the missing HYDRA funds had been funneled to a series of accounts controlled by the defendant, Margaret Stark."

The packed courtroom burst out in whispers. Maggie froze. She felt Tony staring at the back of her head. Her lawyers weren't so unprofessional as to turn and glare at her, but she felt their bodies go stiff on either side of her, and she sensed the oncoming storm.

The jurors glanced from the witness to the sheaves of financial documents in front of them, their eyebrows raised and pens poised.

_Oh, shit._

 

* * *

 

After receiving a vehement dressing-down from her lawyers for withholding information (apparently "I didn't think about it" didn't cut it when it came to thousands of dollars stolen from HYDRA accounts) they returned to the courtroom for cross-examination. Maggie had given Kemp and Diego enough to ask focused questions that revealed that the funds hadn't been accessed until after she escaped from HYDRA, and that there was no evidence of her being paid before then. The air was more or less cleared, but the seeds had been laid.

All the media could talk about that evening was the possibility that Margaret Stark was a paid HYDRA agent to the last.

 

* * *

 

The following days were filled with various expert witnesses from various government agencies making various assertions about Maggie's collusion with HYDRA. Maggie sat and listened, pointedly ignoring the dull pain in her shoulder and Tony's poorly-concealed anger at each witness. At least the pain in her shoulder was less after she went a round in Helen Cho's Cradle – it had worked wonders, but Dr Cho ordered her to stay in the sling to make sure her joint healed right.

It seemed that the prosecution's case was drawing to a close, but Maggie couldn't bring herself to be relieved. She had no illusions that the defense case would be any easier on her mental health, and after everything she'd seen… well, the jury so far had no reason to find her anything but guilty.

 

She was considering the best way to go about preparing for life in prison one afternoon as she awkwardly washed her free hand in the courthouse ladies' bathroom. She'd more or less figured out how to do everything with one hand, and the doctors said the sling could come off in a few more days.

Suddenly, a prickle of awareness crackled across the back of her neck. She didn't visibly react, but her eyes flicked around the small bathroom as she chased the feeling.  _There._ An unopened stall door. Maggie had been in the bathroom for nearly ten minutes, what with the sling getting in the way, and that door had been closed the whole time. And now the lock was turning–

Maggie whirled around, hand already flying to the sling's clasp to rid herself of any restraints if it came to a fight, but she hesitated at the sight of the woman who stepped out from the stall. Her tear-filled eyes glittered with anger, maybe even hatred, but this wasn't a woman preparing herself for combat. She was in her mid-thirties, pretty, with pale blonde hair and big brown eyes. Her hands were shaking. Maggie tensed as the woman took a breath.

She let out the breath with two words, spoken like a curse: "Ben Mitchell."

Maggie's eyes closed and she sagged back against the countertop. When she opened her eyes again the woman's gaze burned into her, determined and wrathful.

"I killed him," Maggie murmured. _Thirty one year old male, limited access. Poisoning_. "Who was he to you?"

The woman's face flickered. Grief seeped through the cracks, but then the anger returned. "My brother."

Maggie wanted to curl into a ball and shrivel into nothing. But she met the other woman's gaze evenly. "I know it doesn't help, but… I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

The woman took a step forward, fists balling. Maggie didn't react. " _Bring my brother back_ ," she spat. "That's what you can do."

"I can't do that," Maggie replied softly. "I think you may have some idea of how much I wish I could."

Something about the words, or the defeated way she'd spoken them, seemed to make the woman's grief-fueled rage ebb and fade away. Her hands fell loose by her sides and the tension seeped from her shoulders until she and Maggie were just staring at each other across the white tile, silent and haunted by ghosts.

The woman's eyes flickered down, taking Maggie in from her feet, to her sling, to her face, before meeting her eyes again. After a few more seconds she wiped the tears from under her eyes and walked out.

Like an echo, Maggie recalled something she'd said to Bucky back when they'd first gone on the run and she had realized just how much pain she'd inflicted on the world:  _What do we do, to repay all the blood we spilled?_

Almost three years later she was no closer to an answer.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The study I mention is low-key based on a real life study. Their findings belong to them, and I mean no disrespect towards the real life scientists because as far as I can see their scientific method was bang on and they haven't used it to be dicks to anyone IRL. So pls don't come at me, science nerds.
> 
> Up next: the defense begins!


	63. Chapter 63

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and happy Monday!
> 
> EDIT: I have been warned that this chapter is a lil bit of a tearjerker, so be warned and maybe don't read on public transport x Enjoy!
> 
> PS: If it's by the New York Bulletin, then it's written by Karen Page. Just because.
> 
> Edit #2: Formatted the tweets

 

January 2nd, 2017  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

"Your honor, the prosecution rests its case."

 

* * *

 

The first defense witness, a silver-haired man in a grey suit, took the stand. Maggie watched him swear to tell the truth as she gripped the seat of her chair with her free hand.

"You alright?" Diego asked, eyeing her death-grip on the chair.

Maggie swallowed. "I'm terrified."

Diego didn't need to ask why. The source of her terror lay in neat piles on the desk in front of him. Maggie glanced over her shoulder – Tony, Pepper, Vision. They sat at the front row, as they always had (though Vision and Rhodey swapped places), their heads high and their eyes warm. Maggie's gaze swept over the rest of the packed courtroom, taking in the grim expressions. Her eyes caught on a face towards the back – the woman from the bathroom, her brown eyes narrowed.

Maggie sighed and turned around when Diego stood up.  _Here we go._

 

The witness, Edward Doyle, was an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. analyst who had apparently dedicated the rest of his life to combating HYDRA's influence. And his job now was to give expert testimony on the Wyvern Project.

Maggie could only watch, pressed as far back in her seat as she could go, as he gave profiles of the Wyvern Project's senior members: Project Leader Peters, Chief Scientist Sanders, Marino. He explained the origins of the Wyvern Project, its extensive scientific and military membership, and the Project's aims: "they were driven to create an asset for HYDRA that rivaled the Winter Soldier in efficiency and violence, as well as a great mind to support their scientific endeavors."

He based his testimony on the Québec data that had been saved for Maggie, as well as photos of the Québec base from Tony's expedition there. Andrea and Diego's investigators had compiled information about the twelve children who had been there before Maggie. They were taken from all over the globe, and each was destroyed in their own way. Doyle discussed the autopsy report of the girl who'd taken Maggie's place in her family's car, highlighting the evidence of horrific experimentation and the medical examiner's posited cause of death: extreme cranial trauma, with signs of electrocution and extensive brain damage.

The courtroom fell into a hushed silence as Doyle spoke, painting images of plots and murders and experiments done in dark caverns.

Maggie's skin was crawling. But they'd only just begun.

"When was Ms Stark taken from her family?" Diego asked.

Doyle's already-heavy brow furrowed further. "The files don't indicate when or how, as those records were specifically targeted in the electronic purge, but the Stark car crash occurred on December 16th, 1991."

A chill ran through Maggie, mingled with a ghost-memory of the radiant heat of flickering flames. She felt Tony tense behind her.

"Why did they take her?"

"Well as these documents show, the young Ms Stark was being followed by Wyvern Project spies for at least three months before she was kidnapped." Doyle nodded at the screen and slowly clicked through each piece of evidence. Yellowing newspaper clippings of Maggie, her test scores from school, images of the projects she'd worked on, and numerous faded photographs: a young and bright-eyed Maggie following her nannies from the mansion to the car; looking up at her dad outside the Stark Industries LA headquarters; eating with her mom at a café.

Maggie looked over her shoulder at Tony. He'd gone pale, and he clutched Pepper's hand like a lifeline. Maggie's stomach flipped over.

She barely noticed the faces in the rest of the courtroom but she got a general impression of wide eyes and hands over mouths.

"As you can see," Doyle said, "the Project members were interested not just in her comings and goings but in her budding engineering skills, her high intelligence, and her physical and mental aptitude. She was systematically stalked from just after her fifth birthday to December of that year."

"And what they found appealed to them?" Diego said, not quite keeping the disgust out of his voice.

"Yes. This report states:  _recruit exceeds expectations. Recommend imminent pickup._ "

"Pickup meaning kidnap."

"That's correct."

Diego paused for a few moments. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy. "I now refer to exhibits 256 through 303. Mr Doyle, you've reviewed all these documents – they indicate the initial testing, experimentation and training conducted on the defendant from 1991 to 2001, correct?"

"That's correct."

"Reports," Diego continued. "Photographs. Videos. I'm going to ask you to take us through the evidence Mr Doyle, but before I do… anyone present who may become unwell at the sight of blood, violence, or torture should leave the room." He waited a moment. In the shocked silence that followed, a few people stood and walked out. Maggie wished she could too. "Let's begin."

 

Maggie had looked through the Québec data before. She knew what was there. But it was one thing to know, and another for each and every detail to be relived, discussed, in front of over a hundred people. It lasted all day.

Doyle started with the data about the initial testing phase. He read each line of every report, his voice mostly steady. Sometimes he faltered, such as when he read:  _Subject surpasses mental capacity expectations, but injuries sustained during acquisition limit the subject's physical capabilities. Suspected fractured femur, heavy bruising._  This was accompanied by a grainy photograph of the five-year-old Maggie's naked chest, with a thick black and purple bruise cutting diagonally from her shoulder to her hip: the shape of a seat belt.

Maggie listened to Doyle as he went over what was done to her in sickening detail – the serum, the training, the times they cut her open, the torture. He didn't go much into the psychological reprogramming or the chair, as that would come later, but it was enough.

The videos were the worst. Maggie stomached most of them until they came to the last and the longest one, of Marino painting Maggie's exposed bone with molten metal. The courtroom speakers shrieked with Maggie's recorded screams.

She had heard it before but this was so much louder, so much worse. She closed her eyes and covered her ears, and after a few minutes she felt Tony's tap her hands, feather light, to let her know it was over. He knew not to touch her back.

Doyle kept talking. Maggie listened, but she started not to hear. Her ears filled with a ringing sound that got louder and louder throughout the testimony and started to sound like a scream. She focused on her breathing, using every therapy technique she knew to stay calm, to stay seated, to stop herself screaming and trying to flee.

She was dimly aware of gasps and horrified whispers. More people got up and left, their faces ashen. Towards the end Andrea took Maggie's free hand – which had been putting cracks in her chair – and wrapped it in her own.

The words washed over her and through her, and she barely heard the prosecutor's cross-examination. Mallory did his best to discredit the evidence, but there wasn't much he could do to make the jury doubt the things they'd just seen.

 

* * *

 

CNN:  _Horrifying scenes in the courtroom today as the defense shows evidence of Margaret Stark's torture under HYDRA. From a gallery member: "I don't know how anyone could do those things to a child. It's beyond belief."_

 

NBC News: "I've been a court reporter for thirty years, Jack, I've seen some terrible things. But the sheer amount of pain and suffering presented by both the prosecution, and now the defense, is staggering."

 

The New York Bulletin:  _The courtroom was utterly silent. I don't think there was a person there who wasn't affected – the woman sitting next to me had to leave to throw up. I could barely look away from the evidence, but when I did I_   _looked to Margaret Stark, because I wondered how a person could relive such horrors in silence._

_She'd been watching and listening for most of it but when I looked this time, her head was bowed and her hands covered her ears, blocking out her screams from over twenty years ago. I wanted to join her in blocking out the screams, but there was a sense amongst the people in the courtroom that this was trauma that had gone unnoticed and overlooked for too long. I forced myself to listen. Because if I learned anything today, it was that Margaret Stark has not been heard in a long, long time._

 

* * *

 

Doyle's testimony ended, but they weren't done with the Québec data. On day two they brought in Neil Perry, a neuroscientist and psychologist with expertise in indoctrination and torture. His job was to put the facts into context.

"The evidence is very clear about how they broke Ms Stark down and reshaped her into what they needed," Perry explained, clutching a series of progress reports. "Here, in the report dated March 22nd, 1992:  _Chief Scientist Sanders' team has had great success with mental reconditioning and the memory suppression machine. Identity destruction, repetition tactics and continuous cycles with the machine have ensured that obedience trigger words are buried deeply in the Wyvern's psyche._ " He cleared his throat. "They knew what they were doing. They did they research. They brought fifty years of mental reconditioning research and tactics and inflicted them on a five year old."

Andrea bowed her head. "Would Ms Stark's intelligence have helped her to combat the reconditioning?"

Perry shook his head. "It doesn't matter how smart you are – this level of complete psychological destruction would work on anyone."

"Please read the next two paragraphs of that report."

Perry took a breath. " _Final stages of reconditioning included presenting the subject with two "innocent" targets, then providing the subject with a weapon and telling it to kill one of the targets. Subject initially questioned the order. This resulted in elimination of both targets, and 95 milliamps of electrical current were run through the subject's body._ " Everyone in the courtroom had already heard this in Doyle's testimony, but there were still gasps. " _The subject was then wiped. This stage of reconditioning was repeated, with new targets each time, until the subject consistently obeyed orders in conjunction with the trigger words, with no questioning or distress._

" _Sanders and her team have asked me to particularly highlight this stage, as it seems to have had the best results in cognitively recalibrating the subject, and may prove useful in later projects._ "

"Ms Stark was six years old at the time," Andrea said heavily. "What impact would such 'reconditioning' have on a child of that age?"

"In my opinion, the impact is clear. At that point you don't have a thinking, feeling individual who makes choices. You have someone who obeys orders above all else, 'with no questioning or distress.' From a very early age the Wyvern Project was obsessed with ensuring absolute obedience and efficiency."

"Let's talk about the terminology they used to refer to Ms Stark. Did they ever refer to her by name?"

"No. If you run a search on the available data, from Québec and from other HYDRA sources, there is not one mention of Margaret Stark. They gave her a new identity: the Wyvern. They referred to her by that designation, or they called her 'the asset', or 'the weapon'. Usually, they called her 'it'. This kind of language is dehumanizing to an extreme degree. It's clear that Ms Stark's captors did not even see her as a human being – to them she was a weapon made of flesh, bone, and metal, to be loaded and aimed at their enemies."

"In your professional opinion, how effective was this psychological reconditioning program?"

"I've never seen this level of physical and mental torture alongside such consistent mental conditioning. It was thoroughly researched, and carried out with devastating effect. In fact HYDRA's knowledge of conditioning goes beyond my own – the 'trigger words' that are constantly mentioned, for example. I don't know how such a thing could be implemented, but from the evidence they sound terrifyingly effective."

"What do you think was going on inside Ms Stark's head? How did she function, day to day?"

"They changed Ms Stark's very identity and the way she thought about herself. She saw herself as the Wyvern, as a weapon. She was given no space to think of anything but obeying her captors and carrying out their every whim."

"Was Ms Stark capable of making moral judgments about what was right or wrong?"

"Certainly not. I doubt she had a conception of right or wrong at all."

"Would a person be able to break out of such strict conditioning?"

Perry took a breath. "I honestly don't see how. The conditioning, the utter destruction of identity, the dehumanization, the torture, these trigger words, all on top of this Memory Suppression Chair – which I know will be described in detail later – that's a perfect storm in terms of keeping an individual under complete control. And yet there is evidence that the Wyvern – excuse me, Ms Stark – was confused. Once or twice even questioned orders."

"What happened then?"

"They wiped her immediately. They didn't tolerate any sign of independent thought, and they certainly didn't tolerate questions."

 

* * *

 

That night Maggie went back to the Avengers Facility. She needed to get out of the mansion packed with memories, needed to get away from the files that detailed the way her mind had been taken away from her, and the people who picked over each detail. She knew they were just helping but she couldn't help the way her whole body rebelled against the relived memories. Even after she'd left the courthouse she felt shaky and exhausted, and she knew she looked terrible – bags hung under her eyes, and her shoulders slumped.

The world was in shock at the details of what HYDRA had done to her, but she couldn't bring herself to pay attention to it.

Back at the facility she walked into the forest with Vision, trying to lose herself in the crunch of snow under her feet and the beauty of the stark black branches against the white sky.

"Distract me," she murmured, after they'd walked for who knew how long. "Tell me about the guy who tried to shoot Tony."

Vision's feet didn't leave prints in the snow. "He's homeless. He wouldn't say anything at first and we couldn't find a record of him getting the gun, and there was no discernible reason for him to shoot Mr Stark." He lifted a branch so Maggie could pass under it. "He started talking a few days ago. Apparently three men in masks gave him a large amount of cash and a gun, told him to shoot Tony Stark on the courthouse steps and then as many people after Mr Stark as he could. They said they'd break him out of prison as a reward and set him up in the Bahamas with a new identity."

"Does he know anything about the men who hired him?"

"No. We're looking into them though."

"But you guys thought something like this might happen."

Vision didn't miss the sharp glance she shot him, and he sighed. "I can't tell you much more than this, Maggie. It's an Avengers investigation. But I promise that we'll keep you and your brother safe."

"Thank you," she said, watching the words condense into a cloud of vapor and then vanish. She sighed. "I don't know how to face what's coming, Vis."

He held out his hand and she took it. He was, as always, surprisingly warm. "You will face it as you always have," he said with not an ounce of doubt on his face. "With dignity, and strength. And you will overcome it."

Maggie's face crumpled and she finally allowed herself to cry. Vision wrapped his arms around her and she wept into his synthetic chest, shaking in the freezing air.

 

* * *

 

Back during the discovery process, Andrea and Diego had come to Maggie with a manila folder.

"What do you know about a… Vincent Silva?" Diego asked, frowning down at the folder.

Maggie had frozen where she sat. "He's a witness?"

"Not yet. He's one of the very few convicted HYDRA agents in prison, but the prosecution hasn't called him as a witness. We're wondering why they're holding back. Do you know him?"

"Um… yes."

Once she'd explained her history with Silva, Andrea's eyes glinted.

"I can work with that," she said. "Do you think he would have told anyone about your visit?"

"Hard to say. Bucky and I scared him pretty bad."

"With what he's done, I don't think anyone would blame you."

 

* * *

 

January 5th, 2017  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Vincent  _Goddamn_  Silva. He came in wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, his hands in chains, escorted by two guards. He hadn't aged well in the two years since Maggie had last seen him: his dark hair was thinning, streaked with grey, and his face was sallow and unhappy. When he saw her sitting at the defense table his face went white and he missed a step, stumbling between his guards. Maggie didn't take her eyes off him until he'd entered the witness box and sworn to tell the truth.

She recalled her last words to him:  _if only I could remember._

He clearly remembered her: his eyes kept darting toward her and then skittering away, his fingers fidgeting at the edges of the witness box. He'd never seen her in normal clothes before.

"Mr Silva," said Andrea, stalking out from behind the defense desk. "Please tell us about your role in HYDRA."

Again his eyes flickered to Maggie. Hers narrowed.

"I, uh, I was a contractor, of sorts. I'm a neuroscientist, they… they needed a neuroscientist."

"What for? What did you work on?"

"I worked on the machine. The Memory Suppression Machine."

"Could you summarize the purpose of the Memory Suppression Machine?"

"It was for HYDRA's assets–"

"Pardon me – by assets, you mean people?"

"Yes. The chair, essentially, made them forget." He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

"Forget what?"

"Everything: past, present, identity. Everything but operational knowledge, training, and obedience to HYDRA."

"I'm going to get you to elaborate on that in a moment Mr Silva," Andrea said, the words spoken almost like a threat. "But first let's pause for a moment to bring in Exhibit 324."

The bailiff opened the wide doors on the side of the courtroom, and chairs creaked as everyone in the gallery leaned forward to get a better look.

Two new bailiffs wheeled in an enormous flatbed trolley weighed down by a metal machine with various computers and wires hooked up to it, and an evidence tag wrapped around one metal support. The machinery centered around a single metal chair.

It had taken a lot of searching to find a fully functional Memory Suppression Machine, as the one in Siberia had been crushed. Tony had eventually located this one in a European law enforcement agency's vault (they hadn't known how to get it working), and called in a bunch of favors to get it to the States.

Maggie had known this was coming. All the same, the sight of the black, hulking machine lying dormant on the trolley made her hackles rise and filled her with dread. She was so fixated on staring at the chair that she barely heard Andrea's next words:

"I also enter Exhibit 325, a series of plans for this machine sourced from the HYDRA information leak."

Maggie realized her toes were digging into the carpet, unconsciously trying to push her further away from the machine, and she forced herself to relax. The seat beside her slid out and someone dropped into it, and she looked over to see Tony.

"You're not supposed to be there," she breathed.

"Looks like the judge is going to give me a pass," Tony murmured, casting a glance at Moore – who looked unimpressed, but didn't say anything. "How're you doing, Marigold?"

"I've been better," she said, rigid in her seat. "Also been worse, though."

Tony's hand covered hers on the table.

"Mr Silva," Andrea said. "Can you confirm that this machine – or rather, one like it – is what you used on HYDRA's  _assets_?"

Silva squirmed. "Yes."

Andrea circled the machine, which now rested squarely in the open space in front of Judge Moore's bench. The machine looked odd in this open, light-filled space, though it looked far from harmless. It was as if the machine had absorbed the darkness it had existed in for so long and brought those shadows with it into the courtroom. The large metal arms glinted darkly.

"More specifically," Andrea continued, "you used such a machine on my client, Ms Stark?"

Again Silva's eyes flickered toward Maggie. She wiped any trace of fear from her face and met his eyes.

"That's correct," he murmured.

"How many times?" Andrea asked, her eyes fixed on him.

Silva swallowed. "I don't know."

There was a pause. Andrea paced toward the witness box. "Why don't you give us your best estimate,  _doctor_ Silva?"

Mallory got to his feet. "Objection, your honor, she's arguing with the witness!"

Moore cleared his throat. "I'll remind you that this is the defense's witness, Mr Mallory, and I don't think we're there just yet. But mind yourself, Mrs Kemp."

Andrea nodded without looking away from Silva. " _Please_ estimate how many times you used this machine on Ms Stark."

Silva paled. "I… maybe… maybe a hundred times? More than that, probably." He shrank into himself. A low mutter went through the courtroom.

"I see," Andrea said. Her hands loosened by her sides. "Mr Silva I understand this is a very complicated machine – these plans are full of complex scientific and medical terms that can be very difficult to wade through. So to get a better picture of the function of this machine, why don't we demonstrate it?"

Maggie hissed through her teeth, low enough that only Diego and Tony could hear her. Tony's fingers curled around her hand.

Andrea's question to Silva had been rhetorical – everything was already in place for the machine to be demonstrated. They switched on the power and the computer screens flickered to life as the machine let out a low hum. The mechanical sound washed over the courtroom and the murmuring gallery fell silent. As the machine powered up Andrea asked Silva about the process of preparing an  _asset_  and how he set up the machine, but Maggie didn't hear him.

She took purposefully long breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She couldn't look away from the empty seat of the machine. Tony's hand was warm over hers.

"You're okay," he murmured. "This is helping you. It's not going to hurt you."

She barely managed a jerky nod to acknowledge that she'd heard him.

But then they fired up the machine. The arms swiveled toward the headpiece of the chair and the computer screens flickered. For the first time in three years Maggie heard that sound: sparking lightning and incoming pain, and the blood drained from her face. It was all she could do to stay in the moment, to not regress into her flickering memories. Blood roared in her ears and her skin washed first hot, then cold, then scalding hot again.

She heard gasps and cries throughout the courtroom as the machine kicked into full effect with buzzing, blue glowing electricity, and she yanked her hand out from under Tony's to slap it over her mouth.

"'M gonna be sick," she gasped. Tony vanished, but returned in another instant with a trashcan. Maggie seized it, ducked her head between her knees and threw up her breakfast, sobbing as she heaved. Past the sound of her own vomiting she heard Diego shout "turn it off!" and a moment later she felt someone gather up her hair and pull it away from her face.

After a minute Maggie managed to pull herself semi-upright, shivering from head to toe as she pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks. With one look she could see that everyone in the courtroom was staring at her.

"… call a recess–" she heard Judge Moore say, blurry and faded as if he was underwater. Like a shot she was off, bolting out of her seat and through the courtroom before bursting through the doors and toward the nearest bathroom.

Once she'd found the relative safety and privacy of the women's bathroom Maggie collided with the tile wall and sank to the ground, clutching her hair with her free hand as she tried to stop hyperventilating. Her gasping breaths echoed against the tile and bounced back at her, though not as loudly as the lingering echoes of crackling lightning.

Her throat burned, her mouth tasted foul, and her face was a mess of tears and cold sweat. She squeezed her eyes shut but then opened them with a gasp when all she could see was the afterimage of the chair's glowing metal plates.

The bathroom door opened. Maggie drew her knees up to her chest and held up a hand, but it was just Tony.

He'd taken off his orange glasses, so she could easily see the bags under his eyes. His face was lined with concern and something deeper, like grief, and when his eyes met hers he silently paced across the bathroom to slide down next to her on the floor. Maggie couldn't help the way her chest shuddered, and she almost burst into tears anew when Tony put an arm around her, warm and tight. She curled up and into him, free hand blindly seizing his jacket in an unyielding fist. She buried her face in his shoulder and cried, staining the expensive fabric. Her raw sobs echoed.

"I'm sorry, Maggot," Tony said, voice loud in the empty bathroom. "We should have asked for them to excuse you for that. I didn't think–"

"Neither did I," she gasped, pulling her face away. "The sound–"

"Yeah, I know," Tony murmured, and his arms tightened around her. "I know. I'm so sorry."

From the dark tone to his voice Maggie knew he wasn't just apologizing for today. He was apologizing for the hundred times before that. She buried her face in his shoulder again and let herself cry, and slowly the cold fear that had seized her body faded away.

 

When they returned to the courtroom Maggie's lawyers and the prosecution had a fight about prejudicing the jury, but she wasn't really listening. The chair was still there, lifeless on the trolley bed.

Once they'd reached an agreement Judge Moore turned his gaze on Maggie. She'd cleaned herself up but there was no hiding her bloodshot eyes and haunted expression.

"Are you ready to continue, Ms Stark?" He asked. His voice wasn't unkind.

"I am," she said, then cleared her throat to shake away the slight tremor. "I'm sorry for holding things up."

"That's quite alright. If you need to take another break, ask your lawyers to call for a recess." His face softened for a moment into compassion, and Maggie felt the prosecution scowling at her.

She nodded. "I will."

 

* * *

 

_BREAKING: Margaret Stark breaks down in court._

 

* * *

 

Hungry P   
@h4ngr3   
Please. Her crocodile tears won't change the facts. #wyverntrial #guilty 10:23 AM- 5 January 2017  546  2400 

 

Yuki Isbell  
@yukiisbell44   
I was terrified of that machine from a hundred feet away. I can't even imagine being in it - not just once, but over a hundred times. This is sickening. #margaretstarktrial 11:02 AM - 5 January 2016  792  5432 

 

* * *

 

Andrea wasn't done with Silva.

"How likely is it that a person subjected to this device would regain intact memories?"

He hesitated. "I… I don't know. We never studied recall, we were… we were focused on removing memories."  
Maggie heard a disgusted scoff from somewhere in the gallery.

"In your medical opinion, would a person be capable of making moral judgments and choices after being subjected to the device?"

"N-no. They weren't supposed to be."

Maggie wondered if it was possible for Andrea to kill someone with her eyes. She wouldn't put it past her. "Now, you've stated that you used this device on my client over a  _hundred_ times. Did she ever volunteer for this process? Did she ever sign a consent form?"

He swallowed. "Not… not to my knowledge."

"Please, Mr Silva. I think you knew exactly what you were doing. Did Ms Stark want you to do this?"

There was a long silence, and Silva's eyes dropped to the bench in front of him. "… No," he finally answered in a quiet voice.

After going into painful, scientific detail of the tortures he'd put her through, Andrea got Silva to admit that Maggie had been the one to leak his information to law enforcement and get him to turn himself in. Silva cried when he admitted that he wouldn't have turned himself in if it weren't for Maggie. Maggie listened with a clenched jaw, and felt stares prickling on the back of her neck.

Andrea finished Silva's testimony with the single image of Maggie's face from the Québec data: twelve years old, strapped into the chair, her face wrenched in a silent scream. Two people left the courtroom, and Maggie looked over her shoulder to see Tony staring down at his hands, his eyes glimmering with tears. Pepper had one arm wrapped around him but she wasn't holding up much better – her mascara streaked down her cheeks in black trails.

When Andrea was finished the prosecution tried to salvage the situation, but there wasn't much they could do after everything that Silva had admitted about what he'd done to Maggie.

 

* * *

 

As they broke for lunch, Diego and Andrea checked on Maggie. She reassured them that she was doing better, and apologized for interrupting Andrea's questioning. The other woman just gave her a look as if she'd said something incredibly stupid.

Diego sighed and loosened his tie. "Calling Silva was a risk," he said. "Especially since it's now public record that you committed more crimes under your own steam: breaking and entering, intimidation, assault. But that's small time, comparatively, they wouldn't put you away for that for long and I doubt they'll pursue it at all." His face darkened. "That guy's a dirtbag."

Maggie cocked her head. "He's a coward."

"That too," Diego agreed.

Maggie closed her eyes, wisely not informing her lawyers that alongside the various crimes she'd committed against Silva, she'd also put serious thought into murdering him.

But she recalled the wide-eyed way Silva had looked at her just before he'd been escorted out of the courtroom, just as terrified of her now as he'd been two years ago when she loomed out of the darkness of his study and glared at him from behind red goggles. She allowed herself a small smile.

 

* * *

 

CNN Breaking News:  _FEATURED: Margaret and Tony Stark, along with Pepper Potts and Colonel James Rhodes, share a group hug in the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse after a harrowing and dramatic morning of testimony._


	64. Chapter 64

 

The next witness wasn't anyone that Maggie recognized – he was a man, maybe mid fifties, though it was hard to guess because his body and face were sunken with the markers of disease and possibly drug abuse. His lined face was pocked with old scars, and his skin was gaunt. His nose was swollen and bumpy. And yet he looked around the courtroom with resolve in his eyes, his shoulders straight. His tailored suit was clean.

Once he was sworn in Maggie forgot about the dull pain in her shoulder and the residue of her panic from the morning, and leaned in to hear what he had to say.

"When I was twenty two I lived in East Berlin," he said, the facts backed up by his German accent. "This was 1987 – two years before the wall came down, and my family and I lived in a heavily Soviet-controlled area. It wasn't unusual for people to go missing."

"Is that what happened to you, Mr Weber?" Asked Diego. "You went missing?"

The man – Mr Weber – nodded once and scratched his neck. "I remember someone coming up behind me when I walked home from work one night, jabbing a needle in my neck. I wasn't involved with any anti-Soviet groups, so before I passed out I remember thinking:  _but I didn't do anything wrong._ " Mr Weber shrugged. "Not that they ever really needed a reason. But I wasn't being kidnapped by the government."

"What happened when you woke up?"

"I woke up in some kind of base. I remember… everything was grey. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. Even the people were grey – that was the color of their uniform, and when they looked at me there wasn't any light or compassion in their eyes." Mr Weber's eyes unfocused, his voice heavy with memories. "They called me  _subject five._ They didn't waste any time – they started experimenting right away, hooking me up to that… that  _machine_."

Diego cleared his throat and brought up a picture of the Memory Suppression Machine. "This is the machine you're referring to, Mr Weber – or rather, a version of this machine?"

Mr Weber's eyes darkened. "That's it."

Maggie's hand drifted up to her mouth and she noticed Andrea shoot her a sideways look, as if worried she was about to start puking again. She shook her head at Andrea and turned back to the man in the witness box. She wondered if he could still hear the buzzing arms of the machine, if he still sat in that chair in his nightmares.

Diego turned to the jury. "Mr Weber's captors were an offshoot of HYDRA, who built a version of the Memory Suppression Chair based on Arnim Zola's original designs." He turned back to Mr Weber. "How many times did they put you in the device?"

"I didn't remember, because after I got out my memory was… fragmented. But then I read the files-"

"You're referring to the files about your captors released with the HYDRA information dump," Diego clarified, already bringing up the relevant documents.

"Yes. I read them, and it says they put me in the machine six times." He visibly shivered. "That doesn't seem like a lot, but whenever I think back to that place I just remember feeling like that pain, that agony, was never-ending."

Diego let Mr Weber have a moment before he asked his next question. "Could you describe what it was like to experience the Memory Suppression Machine? Please take your time, I appreciate that this is difficult to relive."

Weber nodded his thanks, then took a deep breath. "The first time," he said in a shaky voice, "I thought they were going to read my brain waves – like an EEG, you know? They didn't tell me anything about what was going to happen, just told me  _sie werden einwilligen_ – 'you will comply'. They… they strapped me to a metal table, vertical off the ground like this-" Weber cocked his arm at forty five degrees, fingers pointing upwards- "and the machine had these… these arms, I guess you could call them."

Diego brought up a blueprint of the exact device Weber had gone under – slightly different from the machine that Maggie was familiar with, but undoubtedly with a similar purpose.

Weber swallowed. "The sound is what I remember most vividly. When they turned the machine on there was a low hum. Reminded me of my uncle's generator, back home. Then the arms started sparking and made this terrible crackling sound, and I remember thinking ' _it's broken_ ,' but the scientist said… he said ' _ready to proceed_ '." Weber choked on a sob, and pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket with shaky fingers. After pressing the handkerchief to his lips, he continued. "The arms came down here and here-" he gestured to points on his forehead, and the same areas on Maggie's forehead prickled with memory. "And then it was just…" he shook his head. "That kind of pain, it is indescribable. I couldn't form a thought, there was nothing but the sensation that my mind was being… torn apart. Obliterated. I remember hearing myself scream. And there was this sense… like I was waiting to die." Weber clutched the side of the witness box. "That was what it was like every time – it went on for minutes at a time, once for half an hour, with electricity surging through my brain. The first time I bit down so hard that I broke my teeth – after that they gave me a mouth guard."

Diego bowed his head for a moment, letting the words sink in. "And can you describe your state of mind after the machine was turned off?"

Weber cocked his head and turned his eyes upward to the ceiling. "It was so strange," he said, his voice almost wondering. "It was like opening your eyes and being in pain, but not remembering why. And more than that – I didn't have any identity, any thoughts. I was just… empty. And they weren't just using the machine – they kept constantly hammering away with their ideology and telling me my new identity. The first few times were a mess, I just kept screaming.

"But then the time came where they put me through the machine, I opened my eyes, and they asked if I was ready for duty. And I just  _knew._ I knew that I was their vessel and I knew I was ready to serve them. It's hard to describe it. I didn't remember my family, my home, the things I liked or the things that made me  _me._ I'd forgotten my name. My whole being and identity was just… obedience. It only lasted about a minute before I remembered some things and realized that something wasn't right, but then they just wiped me again."

"I'm very sorry Mr Weber. Could you please read this line from Arnim Zola's initial designs of the machine?"

Weber took the document with shaking fingers. He read it, sighed, and then began. " _The process will eliminate irrelevant memories and data from the subject. When applied correctly the subject will be wiped clean, a blank slate on which HYDRA may write a new destiny_."

Maggie shuddered – the words, spoken in Weber's accent, reminded her of two days she'd spent in a New Jersey bunker with an insidious voice in her ears.

"How did you escape such a fate, Mr Weber?" asked Diego.

"Well I didn't remember any of this until a while later, but I've always been able to remember my rescue. I woke up, and I was that  _other_ person for just a moment. I gave my loyalty to them and I was ready for my next order. Then I remembered, and they put me back in the machine, but before I could be wiped I was rescued. I never saw who saved me, I only heard their voice leading me to safety."

Weber swallowed. "I was free, but that was… a terrifying time. I couldn't remember my name, who I was, where I was from. They kept me in hospital for three weeks before they tracked down my family. My family took me home, but I didn't remember them. The story was that I'd been kidnapped and tortured by an extremist group and lost my mind in the process." He huffed. "They weren't wrong."

"How did you regain your memories?"

Weber leaned back in his seat and sighed heavily. "It took years. I had flashes of memories but I couldn't hold on to them. The memories came with a headache, which after a while didn't go away at all. It took me two years to piece enough together for me to have some sense of identity but by that point I'd lost everything." He slumped. "And the whole time I was trying to remember, lost and confused, my most solid memory was of opening my eyes after the machine that last time. Because that had never been wiped away. I could remember my mind not being my own, I could remember that drive to  _comply._ It was terrifying, and it drove me half mad."

"Tell us about your recovery."

Weber straightened. "It's been a thirty year process. I came close to death multiple times. I needed to rebuild my life after being kidnapped, but I failed – I was haunted by the returning memories, suffering, and I lost everything. My family, my job, my home. My sanity, for a while. I have chronic migraines to this day, and issues with short term memory – the doctors say I have irreversible brain damage. I drowned myself in drink. I ended up in prison for robbing a liquor store." He sighed. "Remembering the pain is hard. But what haunts me the most?" His face crumpled and Maggie's heart wrenched at the sight of a tear rolling down his pocked cheek. "Remembering what came after the pain," he continued. "The way they twisted my mind. I still struggle with that – if I can be wiped away like that, my very identity, what does that do to my soul? Do I truly have a soul or am I just… a compilation of my memories?" More tears slipped from the corners of his eyes, and his voice shook. "Because once I lost those memories I was nothing. I was an empty vessel for them to fill with what they wanted."

"Do you believe HYDRA destroyed you Mr Weber?" Diego murmured. "Is there no hope for rehabilitation?" Maggie leaned forward.

"If you'd asked me three years ago, I'd have said yes. But then that HYDRA information dump happened, and I realized that I wasn't crazy – everything I'd experienced, everything I'd felt, was real. There was a file about my kidnapping and the experiments they did on me. I realized that I'd gone through that… that horror, but I was here today. I realized that made me strong." His shoulders straightened, and he wiped his tears away with his handkerchief. "So I got clean in prison, did another degree in social work. I got out six months ago and I'm in the process of opening a rehabilitation home for victims of crimes who become homeless. I want to help them before they end up in prison, like I did."

The way the mood in the courtroom lightened was palpable, and Maggie let out a breath.

"That's very admirable, Mr Weber," Diego said with a small smile. "I have just a few more questions for you. Take yourself back, if you are able, to that state of being you inhabited after experiencing the Memory Suppression Machine. That utter emptiness of everything but obedience. Is there anything you wouldn't have done, if they'd asked?"

There was a pause, and Maggie felt darkness creep back into the courtroom. "No. I… I'd have done anything."

"Robbed someone?"

"Yes."

"Committed a terrorist act?"

"Without question."

"Killed someone?"

"Yes, I would have." His brow lowered. "I don't think you get it – the severity of the crime wouldn't have mattered. My  _only_ drive was to do what they said – I'd have done it, and I would have felt nothing because I had no feelings. I'd have killed my own mother." A tear slipped down his face. "It never happened, but the knowledge haunts me – I could have gone my whole life not knowing that there was a time where, if someone had asked, I would have killed my mother without a thought."

"I see. And how did you break out of that state?"

"I… one time I had a flash of a memory of my house, of all things, and a sense of this feeling of… happiness. It was jarring to have that image and that feeling disturb what I thought I knew to be true: that I was nothing, had nothing, felt nothing. It wasn't that I'd remembered who I was, it was more the confusion of those two opposites that distressed me and made them put me under again."

Maggie's heart pounded.  _He understands._

"And like I said, it took me two years to remember enough about myself to feel like I had an identity, even with my family around me giving me information and begging me to remember."

Diego folded his hands in front of him. "You've said you found your strength in facing what happened to you, Mr Weber, and acknowledging it was real. How strong would a person need to be to break away from HYDRA's conditioning – which, admittedly, you were only in the very early stages of – while having no memories of themselves or their loved ones?"

Weber shook his head and for the first time looked over at Maggie. He hadn't really looked at anyone until now, focused inward on his memories, but when his eyes met Maggie's she saw nothing but compassion in them. Her breath caught in her chest.

"If I hadn't been rescued," he said, his voice thick with emotion, "I would be everything they wanted to make me. I can't imagine the strength one would need to pull themselves back from that emptiness, that loss of identity, that utter control. I certainly don't possess such strength."

Maggie's eyes blurred over with tears. Under the desk, Andrea's hand rested on her knee.

 

When Mallory cross-examined Mr Weber he attacked the man about the reliability of his memory, and said that since the conditioning only worked on him for about a minute at most, the Memory Suppression Machine clearly wasn't effective. Maggie didn't have the energy to feel angry.

But Diego certainly did. His voice was terse as he redirected: "For clarification, Mr Weber, you went under the machine six times did you not?"

"That's correct."

"And you've stated that each time the length of your dissociative state increased?"

"That's correct."

"And would you say that  _six_ times is less than the at least  _one hundred_ times that Ms Stark was subjected to the Memory Suppression Machine in the early part of her capture?"

"I would, yes."

"Thank you."

 

* * *

 

It wasn't a great look for Maggie to spend a lot of time with witnesses in the case, so her lawyers wouldn't let her invite Mr Weber back to the mansion. But in the courthouse corridor, she and the German immigrant were drawn together like magnets.

"Thank you," Maggie breathed once they were face to face.

Mr Weber took her free hand in both of his and clasped it tight. "Don't thank me," he said, eyes on hers. "You are not the guilty one in that court room. It was my duty to help them see that."

Maggie, overwrought and overwhelmed, squeezed his hand. "What you said up there…" she cleared her throat. "You're right. You made it through that pain, and you are  _strong._ Don't ever doubt that. I know how painful it must have been to relive it again today."

He smiled. "Do you know the saying ' _aller anfang ist schwer'_?"

She cocked her head. "'Every beginning is hard.'"

"Yes. Once I got out of prison I got my new beginning. It was hard, but I have a chance at a life now." He sighed. "I came here to offer you your own beginning."

They clutched each other's hands for a few more moments, the ghost of HYDRA between them and behind them, before Maggie's lawyers called out that it was time to leave.

"Best of luck, Ms Stark."

"You too, Mr Weber."

 

* * *

 

Buzzfeed _: "A blank slate on which HYDRA may write a new destiny": Arnim Zola, HYDRA, and People as Weapons._

 

* * *

 

Marlow  
@1989marl   
Criminals defending criminals in the #wyverntrial - is this what the defense has resorted to? Laughable. #guilty 5:40 PM - 5 January 2017  392  2982 

 

 

* * *

 

Dr Hank Tithe  
@drhanktithe   
Incredible that people like Mr Weber and Ms Stark were suffering and we never knew until too late. HYDRA has a lot to answer for. #wyverntrial 5:58 PM - 5 January 2017  7662  18.1K 

 

* * *

 

CNN _: Interview – Otto Weber and his Rehabilitation Home for Survivors_

 

* * *

 

On her way out of court that afternoon someone stepped into Maggie's path. Tony and Rhodey both bristled and moved to halt the potential attacker, but Maggie reached out to stop them.

"It's okay," she said, eyes fixed on the person in her way – the woman from the bathroom, whose brother she had killed. "Give us a minute."

Tony frowned. "You know her?"

"Not really," Maggie murmured. "It's okay, though." She peeled away from her entourage and gestured to a nearby room. The woman followed her in, and when the door shut behind them Maggie turned around. The woman's eyes weren't filled with rage this time – they were wary, assessing.

Maggie sighed. The woman had been in court every day since their encounter in the bathroom, and they'd made fleeting eye contact every now and then. Maggie couldn't look at her now without seeing her brother, Ben Mitchell – the last and only time she'd seen him he'd been sitting on a coffee shop stool, unknowingly drinking the cup of coffee that would end his life.

After the day she'd just had, Maggie couldn't find the strength to speak. So she waited as the other woman stared, then chewed her lip, then took a breath.

"Who told you to kill my brother?" she asked, arms wrapped around herself. "Why did they want him dead?"

Maggie closed her eyes. She ignored the phantom echo of the Memory Suppression Chair and focused on her memories, on the mission reports and target profiles she'd read. When she opened her eyes again the woman still watched her warily.

"You trust me to tell you the truth?" she asked.

The woman shifted. "Yeah," she said, eyes flickering. "I do."

Maggie nodded. "Okay." Then she gestured for the woman to sit down, and gave her all the answers she had.

 

* * *

 

Tony, Pepper and Rhodey all straightened as the strange woman emerged from the room with exhausted lines on her face and reddened eyes. A moment later Maggie followed the woman out and made her way down the corridor to Kemp and Martinez.

"What do you think that was about?" Rhodey asked, eyes tracking the stranger as she left.

"I don't know," Pepper said. "But that woman's been in court almost as much as we have."

"Nosy parker, journalist, or victim's family member then," Tony surmised, "and I think we can all probably guess which one she is if Maggie agreed to speak to her."

Silence fell between the three. Rhodey crossed his arms and sighed, watching Maggie talk quietly with her lawyers. She looked  _tired_ , he noticed. He'd almost gotten used to her presence at the facility, enthusiastic and quick with a joke, but since the press conference he'd been seeing less and less of that side of her. And yet he could tell she was trying to hide how much the trial effected her.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "She's stretching herself too thin," he murmured. "With whatever that was, and she's still working on HERACLES as if her life depends on it."

"Do you think there's anything we can do?" Pepper asked, eyes also on Maggie. Rhodey knew the two had gotten close. Hell, Maggie had gotten close to all of them.

"It's the trial," he replied. "She's not going to be okay until it's over, but until then..." he shrugged.

Tony cleared his throat. "And if the trial doesn't go the way it should then Maggie might not ever be okay," he said darkly.

Rhodey sighed again. Maggie brought out a side to Tony that Rhodey had never seen before (or at least not in a long time), that of a  _brother._ Rhodey loved it usually, but now with the trial hanging over Maggie's head like a guillotine on a thread, he noticed that it was becoming more and more difficult to dredge Tony out of this dark, foreboding mood. Tony got this way when the things he cared about were threatened - before now that had been a short list including Tony, Pepper, and his armor (and when aliens came knocking, the whole damn world). Then Maggie had arrived back in their life in a pretty dramatic way, and the list had grown.

But this was a threat that not even Tony could defend Maggie from. And Rhodey had no idea what that meant for his friend.

 

* * *

 

January 6th, 2017  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Maggie woke up early to get her shoulder checked – the doctors had agreed that she didn't need the sling any more – so she didn't have time to ask her lawyers about the next witness. She thought she knew who it was going to be, so when she looked up to see a young woman walk into the courtroom, she blinked and then glanced at Andrea and Diego.

"Who's that?" she whispered.

"Last-minute find," Diego muttered, then turned back to his notes.

The young woman gave her name – Katya Lebedev – and other information to Judge Moore, and Maggie eyed her face as she was sworn in. She was in her early twenties and her sky-blue eyes were alert, taking in every detail of the courtroom around her. Maggie noted the poised way she held herself, and realized that Ms Lebedev had been trained in martial arts at some point in her life.

Diego got to his feet. "Thank you for coming today Ms Lebedev. Could you please tell the court where you lived from the age of six to eleven?"

Lebedev met Diego's eyes. "I lived in a building in Russia. It was owned by an organisation called the Red Room."

Maggie went cold.  _Marble. Blood. Snow._  Her eyes widened and she stared at the young woman – she couldn't be older than twenty five, which meant she probably hadn't been at the Red Room with Maggie. All the same…

"Could you please explain what the Red Room is?"

Lebedev's mouth twisted. " _Was._ It was a program that kidnapped young girls from their families, or from orphanages, and trained them to become assassins. They were allied with the KGB and HYDRA. They took me when I was six – I don't remember much from before then – and trained me for five years. I was… well, they called it training. It was indoctrination." Lebedev spoke frankly, but she couldn't quite hide the tremor in her voice.

"And how did you escape such a controlling organisation?" Diego asked.

"I was… rescued. By the Black Widow."

Whispers broke out across the courtroom and Maggie's eyebrows shot up her forehead. She'd heard that the Red Room fell in the mid 2000s, but she didn't know it had been Romanoff.

"Objection, relevance?" called Mallory.

Diego nodded. "I was just about to get to that, your honor." Moore nodded for him to proceed and called for silence. "Ms Lebedev, these exhibits on the screen beside you show that the Wyvern was at the Red Room from January 1994 to October 1995 – from the age of seven to the age of nine. I know this was before you were at the Red Room, but will you please tell us what you were taught about the Wyvern while you were there?"

"She was a ghost story," Lebedev said, her voice hushed. "Madame B – the woman who ran the Red Room – she would gather new recruits and tell us the legend of this monster – not a human, but a monster – who came to the Red Room and took down every girl who faced her."

Diego circled back to the desk and picked up a folder. "I would like to enter into evidence Exhibit 330, a series of documents recovered from Red Room files. They have been translated from Russian by a third party interpreting company approved of by the prosecution."

The back of Maggie's neck prickled and she sat up straighter.  _How on earth…?_ Her brow furrowed, and the furrow only grew deeper as Diego directed Lebedev to read excerpts from the documents: files about the Wyvern Program's visit and notes on the Wyvern's performance, including an entry about how she struggled with infiltration because she was ' _barely human_ '. Lebedev's voice was mostly even, but every now and then as she read Madame B's words her lip curled.

"Thank you for reading those for us, Ms Lebedev. How would you describe your own experience at the Red Room?"

The woman's eyes dropped to her lap. "I wholeheartedly believed that I was theirs to shape," she said. "I was scared, sometimes, and I wanted to leave, but… as time went on, with every day of training and 'education', I believed more and more that I was a soldier in their cause. They weren't really  _teaching_ us, they were…  _creating_ us." She swallowed. "Madame B would push us to breaking point, over and over. And out of the broken pieces she would make something new. Failure didn't mean you got a second chance." Her eyes flicked up, meeting Diego's. "Failure meant death."

Maggie swallowed. Her eyes were on Lebedev but for a moment her vision shifted, swirled with snow, and she saw a black-haired girl clutching her throat, her eyes drowning with the knowledge that she had failed.

Maggie shivered.

"Did you ever have the option to say no?" Diego continued. "Were your feelings ever considered about what you were tasked with doing?"

"Of course not," Lebedev said, waving a hand. "I've tried to explain this to my family – my adoptive family – many times, and I think they are starting to understand. There was no… no choice, when it came to the Red Room. You bent to their will or you died."

"Once you were free from your captors, did their hold over you break?"

Lebedev's face hardened. "No. Their… their  _teachings_ , lived on. I still believed I was a Widow in Training. I was distrustful of the Black Widow even though she'd saved us, and then I was distrustful of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the police, and my adoptive family. They had to put me in a special 'de-programming' initiative because I kept trying to run away and find my handlers." Lebedev's determined façade flickered. "Breaking out of that conditioning was… the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

Diego cocked his head, considering her words for a moment. They hadn't mentioned Maggie in a while but the comparisons were fairly obvious to everyone in the room.

Eventually Diego took a breath. "I'm going to provide an assessment of Madame B, the woman who controlled the Red Room and oversaw the Wyvern's training for nearly two years, and I want you to tell me, as someone who knew her, if my assessment is accurate or not." He paused. "Madame B was a cruel, highly intelligent woman whose greatest skill lay in systematically destroying the minds, souls, and bodies of young girls and turning them into cold blooded killers. She took pride in her achievements, and saw every young murderer as a masterpiece."

Lebedev's eyes flashed. "Sounds spot on to me."

"With that in mind, would you please read the highlighted line from this document – for the record, this is a page from Madame B's personal notes, specifically regarding her assessment of the Wyvern Program. Go ahead, Ms Lebedev."

The young woman cleared her throat. " _The Program's aims are fundamentally incompatible with ours – here we create masterpieces, widows made of marble. But they have created an abomination fueled by the darkest imaginations of science and programmed like a machine. She is a monster._ "

Silence fell.

In the silence, Maggie met Ms Lebedev's eyes. They shared a knowing look: the look of two women who had met a true monster and were glad she was in the ground.

 

* * *

 

After Ms Lebedev was cross examined and excused, Maggie cornered her lawyers.

"Where did you find her?" she hissed, voice low.

Diego and Andrea gave her blank looks. "I don't know what you _–_ "

"No, don't lie to me,  _where did you find her_? And the Red Room data? I know for a fact that's not publicly available."

Diego and Andrea shared a look. Diego sighed, then turned back to Maggie. "It was an anonymous submission. Guess you've got someone out there watching your back." He cocked an eyebrow. "But let's not look a gift horse in the mouth, shall we?"

Diego and Andrea turned away to get started on preparing their next move, but Maggie didn't go with them. She waded through the busy courthouse corridors, protecting her injured shoulder, until she spotted Ms Lebedev's blonde head. As if sensing she was being watched Lebedev glanced around, and the two women made eye contact. Silently, they slipped towards the nearest empty room.

Once the door was shut behind them Maggie turned to the other woman. Lebedev ran her eyes over Maggie, half-assessing and half-sympathetic.

"Thank you for coming today," Maggie murmured, taking a few steps into the room so she wasn't blocking the exit. The action eased some of the ever-present tension in Lebedev's body. "I know how hard that must have been."

"You're welcome," the other woman replied and reached up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "Anything I can do to help. I was in the Red Room for five years, you were in HYDRA for twenty two." Her eyes softened. "I think you're very brave."

Maggie smiled and cocked her head. "Well, if you see any other ex-Russians around, be sure to thank them for me?"

Lebedev's face broke open in a grin. "Why Ms Stark, I don't know what you're talking about." With that she opened the door, shot another grin at Maggie, then slipped out into the corridor.

Maggie watched her go with a considering look. There went someone who had escaped from the Red Room and went on to live a life with family, and a job, and presumably friends.

_Maybe there's hope for me yet._

 

* * *

 

That afternoon Diego and Andrea called a character witness: a former HYDRA agent who had worked with the Wyvern on a few missions. He was surprisingly frank, explaining that the Wyvern wasn't a person but a weapon. Cold, unfeeling, obedient.

"Did you ever hear her tell a joke?" asked Andrea.

The agent gave her a funny look. "No."

"Would you say she was an intelligent person?"

"Oh, definitely."

"What did she use her intelligence for?"

"For whatever we needed."

"Would you say she was a kind person?"

The agent shrugged. "She wasn't kind, or cruel. She was just… I don't know how to say this any clearer, she was a  _weapon_."

Andrea, eyes narrowed, gestured to Maggie. "The person sitting in the docks today, is she anything like the weapon you knew?"

The agent glanced over at Maggie. She met his eyes evenly, hiding her fists under the table. "She's got the same face," he said with another shrug. "But other than that… no."

 

* * *

 

sarah  
@r0adw0rk   
The Wyvern might have done those things. But Margaret Stark didn't. #wyverntrial 4:34 PM - 6 January 2017  7744  25.6K 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr Weber is canon! Well not his name, I made that up. But Ant-Man (Hank Pym) did rescue a Memory Suppression Machine test subject from an East Berlin HYDRA base in 1987.
> 
> Edit: tweets


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovelies! Starting on Friday (next update) I will be posting chapters on a WEEKLY basis. I'm really sorry to do this, since I've posted two chapters a week since the start of this thing in May, but otherwise I'll run out of chapters and have to slow down anyway. Hopefully by early/mid Jan we should be back to our regular schedule. Apologies again! Over and out x
> 
> edit: tweets formatting

 

From: Shirley Kemp  
_How are you holding up, my dear?_

To: Shirley Kemp  
_As best as I can. Just because it's our turn it doesn't make the testimony any easier to hear. In fact it might be harder._

From: Shirley Kemp  
_You know, my husband used to say 'keep swinging' – he was a baseball player, you understand, lived and breathed the game whether he was on the field or off it. Whenever things got rough he would say 'keep swinging' and sometimes I wanted to take a swing at_ **him** ,  _but now he's gone I find myself saying it in his stead._

From: Shirley Kemp  
_Keep swinging, Maggie._

From: Shirley Kemp  
_Link: TOP 10 BEST CAT VIDEOS OF ALL TIME!_

From: Shirley Kemp  
_Also, tell that grumpy driver of yours to come to my house sometime this week to pick up the cookies I made for you._

To: Shirley Kemp  
_I don't know how to thank you, Shirley. For everything._

From: Shirley Kemp  
_Thank me by eating the cookies, Stark._

 

* * *

 

January 7th, 2017  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

That weekend Maggie strode down a gleaming white corridor towards the workshop, then stopped in her tracks and frowned at the closed workshop doors. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., who's in the workshop?" Through the transparent glass walls she could see the holographic display in use over by the workbench. "I thought Tony was in a strategy meeting with the Avengers."

"He is, Ms Stark. The workshop is currently occupied by Mr Parker. The boss asked him to wait there until the end of the meeting."

"Huh." Maggie gestured for the doors to open and slipped inside, keeping her footsteps silent.

Sure enough Peter sat on the bench in the middle of the workshop, his backpack by his side and his feet swinging loosely as he looked up at a holographic video.

" _Why not just run around carrying sacks with dollar signs on them_?" came his voice, but not from his mouth – it came from the video, where Spider-Man swooped down from a rooftop and kicked a black bag out of a masked man's hands. The camera angle shifted, capturing Spider-Man as he started fighting with what looked like a group of bank robbers, flipping around them and avoiding bullets. One of them managed to shoot through his webbing – a fluke, Maggie thought – and Spider-Man went sprawling. One of the guys got a hit in and knocked Spider-Man back a step, so he retaliated by throwing a punch – which the guy dodged – then kicked him in the chest and sent him flying.

Maggie watched Peter watch the video of himself fighting. She'd fought Spider-Man before, obviously, but she hadn't been putting much thought into his technique. But now, watching the civilian-filmed video, she realized that though Peter was strong and fast it was obvious he didn't have any kind of formal training. As she watched, a bullet whistled through the air right by Spider-Man's face.

"They say the camera adds ten pounds," she called when the video ended, and the teenager sprang from his perch on the workbench like he'd been electrocuted. He flailed around, eyes wide, and when he spotted her by the door he flushed red.

"Ms Stark! I'm not, this isn't–" he gestured up at the hologram, which was already auto playing the next video: another Spider-Man fight, this time with a mugger. "It isn't what it looks like," he finished, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"Looks like you're watching videos of yourself fighting bad guys," Maggie observed, cocking an eyebrow.

Peter swallowed. "Okay, so it is what it looks like." He hung his head and sighed. "I don't know, I got bored, and those guys got pretty close to beating me last weekend, so I… I don't know."

Maggie closed the distance between them, watching Spider-Man flip around a frustrated mugger. "You're being smart, Peter." His head jumped up. "I'm serious, re-watching footage of your fights is a great idea if you want to improve." She gestured to the holo-screen. "See that? You're so busy sassing the guy you didn't see the knife on his boot." As if on cue the mugger reached for the knife and slashed at Spider-Man. The blade slid along his suit but didn't pierce it, and a second later Spider-Man webbed up the guy's feet and hung him from a light post. "If you didn't have your suit then there'd be a three inch hole in your stomach."

Peter laid a hand on his abdomen, eyes wide.

Maggie rewound the video with a twist of her fingers. "You tend to have the element of surprise because you drop in on people mid-crime. Next time, take a second to really look at whoever you're about to attack – assess their strengths and weaknesses and keep an eye out for weapons, concealed or otherwise. Know how I knew that knife was there?" Peter shook his head. Maggie restarted the video and pointed to the man's right boot as he ran along the sidewalk. "Aside from the slight outline of the knife, his gait is off – he's stuffed a knife in his boot and he's running more carefully to avoid hurting himself with it. Most professionals wouldn't make that mistake, but he's an amateur."

Peter watched the slight hitch in the man's step, his eyes going rounder. "Whoah." They watched the rest of the video in silence, and Peter winced when the knife made an appearance. When the video ended he turned to face Maggie. "Are you offering to train me?"

She blinked. "What? No. No, I'm just saying… you need to keep learning if you want to avoid getting killed."

"How am I meant to do that?"

She gritted her teeth. She didn't really know.

"Could you show me some stuff?" Peter asked, his eyes wide and earnest. "Just once, please?"

Maggie hesitated a second longer. But Peter looked so hopeful, practically bouncing on his toes in front of her with his hands clasped together, that she sighed. "Fine. By the way, thank you for my Christmas present."

Peter's ears went red.

 

* * *

 

Maggie's shoulder had mostly healed, but all the same she asked Peter not to aggravate it ("though if we were really fighting, it's important you take advantage of a weakness like that").

They went to the Avengers gym, which was empty at the moment, and took their places on a sparring mat. Peter wore the suit, white lenses wide as he bounced on the balls of his feet and leaned into stretches. Maggie had changed into workout gear; an underarmor shirt and leggings, her feet bare and her hair tied up out of her face. Peter kept fidgeting, but she didn't move a muscle.

"Let's start simple," she said, and Peter stilled. "Try to take me down."

His eye lenses widened. "Seriously? You're not going to teach me how to like… punch, or something?"

"Not yet. Show me how  _you_  punch."

"I don't wanna hurt you, Ms Stark…"

She smiled. "I'll be okay, Peter."

"Alright…" with a reluctant sigh he sprang across the space between them and shot a glob of webbing at her face. Maggie dropped into a roll and kicked up at him when he tried to grab her, knocking him back into the air. He flipped and shot more webbing at her but she sidestepped and got in range again, feinting first for his face and then driving a punch into his stomach.

" _Oof_ ," he gasped, and flipped away. "I was expecting more of a  _wax on, wax off_ situation, Ms Stark, I don't know if I –  _agh_!" He ducked under a roundhouse kick and sprang backwards, firing off more webbing to keep her back.

"I look like an old Japanese guy to you?" she shot back, dodging the webbing and shoulder-charging Peter. He went tumbling backwards in a flurry of limbs. "C'mon, Spider-Man, show me what you've got."

She barely got the sentence out before he stopped retreating, turned on his heel and jumped up, his foot snapping out and clipping her across the jaw. Maggie stumbled –  _damn,_ she'd forgotten how strong he was – then turned to him with a grin. "That's more like it."

 

Maggie hadn't fought anyone in a long time, but she was surprised to find herself having fun – it was hard work trying to find ways to get around Peter's strength and speed, but she loved the challenge and she found herself laughing mid-fight at Peter's weird quips and references. She'd never taken much pleasure in fighting before, only flying, but she enjoyed this – exchanging blows and snarky words, using her skills to help someone else.

After their initial all-out fight they slowed down as Maggie began giving Peter advice on his form.

"You rely too much on being able to web out of your opponent's range," she said, as Peter predictably zipped out of reach on a line of webbing. "It's a good tactic, but you need to have the skills to protect yourself if you get pinned." To illustrate, she flicked out a heel spur and sliced through his next web, stopping him mid-swing, then pounced on his back and flipped him into a hold. She slammed him front-first into the mat, dug her knee into his shoulder joint, then grabbed his arm and locked it straight up, twisting his wrist to make it impossible for him to move the arm. Peter cried out and tried to move, but even though he was stronger than her she had the skills and the position to keep him pinned.

That was when Tony walked in. He took one look at the two of them, Maggie kneeling on Peter's shoulder with one hand twisting his arm into a relentless lock and the other pressing his face into the mat, and blinked.

"Uh, Maggie, did you not get your fill at the airport last year?"

Maggie looked up and rolled her eyes at Tony as Peter struggled. "Yes, that's what this is. An extended revenge plot." She let out an exaggerated evil laugh. "Any last words, Spider-Man?"

"I'm really regretting this!" Peter gasped, wriggling ineffectually.

She laughed. Tony hesitantly stepped toward the sparring mat as if unsure whether to step in or not.

"Okay Peter," Maggie said, tapping the back of his head to make sure he paid attention. "You need to remember three things when you get pinned. First, which parts of your body are still free?"

He stopped struggling. "Um. My legs. My other arm."

"Good. Second thing: grappling holds are all about twisting you into painful positions. So how can you move  _with_ the hold to get out of it?" After giving him a second to process that she continued. "Third: think about your opponent. Where am I vulnerable? I'm focusing on pinning you, so I'm not focusing on my defense."

Maggie watched Peter think about it, still and silent with his face smushed into the mat, as she clutched his wrist and dug her knee into his shoulder blade.

Then all of a sudden, Peter twisted  _up_ into the hold instead of trying to pull away, flipped his torso and legs around to throw her off, and punched her in the ribs for good measure to get her to release his wrist. Maggie tumbled sideways then rolled to her feet and grinned. Peter sat on the mat, rubbing his shoulder but free.

"Well done Peter," she grinned, and offered her hand. He took it and let her heave him to his feet.

"Thanks, Ms Stark," he said breathlessly.

"Maggie," she corrected.

"Maggie," he echoed, and from the way he cocked his head and his mask's eye lenses widened she just knew he was grinning back at her.

Tony watched them with crossed arms and a small smile playing at his mouth, but when they turned to face him he schooled his features into an unimpressed look, one eyebrow cocked.

"What're we doing, running a boot camp now?"

 

* * *

 

Royal Palace, Wakanda

"What are you looking at, brother?"

T'Challa looked up from his Kimoyo beads and nodded a greeting to Shuri as she waltzed into his personal quarters. He was supposed to grant permission to those wishing to enter, but such restrictions usually had little effect on Shuri. He still didn't know how she always managed to talk her way past the Dora Milaje.

He touched his Kimoyo bead and flicked upward, expanding the image he'd been looking at. "These are files about Ms Stark's enhancements." At Shuri's stricken look he held up a hand. "Calm down, I did not take them from your research." He gestured to a revolving scan taken of Ms Stark when she was a child – hard metal lined her bones, linking seamlessly with the arcing wings attached to her back. "These are public record now."

Shuri's brow lowered. "Oh, right. I forgot." Her eyes tracked over the revolving scan, taking in the metal linkages. "These enhancements are… they're impressive for people working without Vibranium, but…"

"They're horrific," T'Challa finished, and Shuri's lips pressed together. He sighed. "Look at these scans, Shuri. These wings are a  _part_ of her, linked like bone and flesh." He frowned.

Shuri cocked her head at him. "You are beating yourself up again."

He gestured at the scan. "This woman had been suffering for decades, her body and soul used against her. I lashed out in a moment of anger and weakness, and dealt her yet more pain."

Shuri sighed. "You believed she was protecting our father's murderer–"

"And I was too blind to see the truth," he grit out. "That I was being used, and that she was merely protecting the man she loved." Shuri opened her mouth again, but he waved a hand. "I know what I've done, Shuri, and I know that I cannot change what happened with my guilt. I am merely…" he ran a hand over his beard. "Reflecting. I have misunderstood many people in my life, Ms Stark perhaps more than most."

Shuri reached out to tap his Kimoyo bead, shutting down the revolving scan of Margaret Stark's bones. He was almost glad they were gone – it felt so personal, as if he were staring into her heart without her permission.

"Is there anything we can do to help her?" Shuri asked, her eyes serious. "We both know she shouldn't have to be put through this trial."

T'Challa ran a hand over his eyes. "I don't think so. We only recently opened our borders and revealed ourselves to the world, we cannot interfere with the judicial process of other countries. Not even when that process is wrong." He sighed. "No; we must watch alongside the rest of the world, and hope." He cocked his head at her. "How is your research going?"

"I'm working as hard as I can," Shuri replied, biting her lip. "Not just to ease her mind, but for  _him._ We need to wake him up."

T'Challa sighed again. "Perhaps it is better he is asleep for this. If I've read my American history correctly, it's very possible that he would do something foolish and brave when he realizes what's going on."

"Then that would be his choice," Shuri said firmly. "He and the Stark woman deserve their choices."

T'Challa smiled at his sister. She still seemed too young to possess such vehement idealism, but he wouldn't change a thing about her. "Sergeant Barnes and Ms Stark are lucky to have you in their corner, sister." But then he frowned. "Did you come here for something?"

She shrugged. "Mother kicked me out of the lab because she said I was spending too much time there and I needed some sunlight." She checked the time on her Kimoyo beads. "But she's probably stopped lurking around the lab door now, I'm going to head back."

"Don't overwork yourself, Shuri."

"Do you  _try_  to sound exactly like mother, or does it just happen naturally?" She rolled her eyes at him and headed for the door, then pulled up short as someone else entered. "Oh, hello  _Nakia_." Shuri whipped around and waggled her eyebrows at T'Challa, who scowled at her.

Nakia, as beautiful as ever in a green robe, glanced between the siblings with a single arched eyebrow. "May I come in?"

"Yes T'Challa, may  _Nakia come in_?"

"Go back to your lab, Shuri."

"I wouldn't want to overwork myself–"

T'Challa tossed a pillow at her and she ducked out of his quarters, cackling. Nakia watched her go, then turned to offer T'Challa a fond smile. "Are you busy?"

"Always. But please stay."

 

* * *

 

January 8th, 2017  
Undisclosed Location, Alaska

In a small timber cabin at the edge of a snow-laden forest, Wanda curled up on a couch beside her… her mind stuttered over what to call Vision. Her… boyfriend? Partner? Nothing seemed quite right when one was dating an omnipresent magenta android in secret while on the run.

"Our lives are strange," she murmured, pulling her blanket tighter around her shoulders and snuggling in closer to Vision's side. It was snowing outside, and she could hear the wind howling against the side of the cabin. The cold didn't affect Vision at all but she hated it – she'd always hated the cold even back in Sokovia, where she'd wrapped herself in shawls and fiery anger to keep the chill at bay. The only reason she'd willingly traveled to  _Alaska_  of all places was for Vision.

"Indeed," Vision replied, sounding thoughtful. Wanda lifted her head and eyed him.

He'd taken on his new form, the one in which he looked startlingly human: pale skin, soft blond hair, and eyes a shade of pale blue that reminded her of the sky at dawn.

Suddenly those eyes turned on her. "You are staring again," he said, lips twitching.

Wanda smiled back and got to her knees so she could touch her fingers to his cheek, feather light. He held still, watching her as she brushed her fingers over his warm skin, across his cheekbone and up to his forehead where she could feel the power of the Mind Stone even as it lay hidden under simulacra.

"What is it?" Vision whispered. He had such an intense way of looking at her, as if she contained the entire universe.

She ran her finger across his creased brow. "You are beautiful like this, as you are in any form. But… your worry lines remain no matter how hard you try to hide them."

He frowned. "I… am sorry, I know we only have small pockets of time in which we can be together–" he stopped talking when she dropped her finger to his lips.

"I'm worried too," she admitted. She and Vision had spoken about Maggie Stark, of course – it seemed they had become friends since Maggie moved to the facility, and Vision loved to talk about his favorite people. Wanda wished she'd gotten to know Maggie better.

But she and Vision hadn't really spoken about the trial. They hadn't had time, what with his work with the Avengers and her work with Steve and the others. Wanda pressed her thumb to Vision's forehead again, smoothing out the worry lines. "How is she?"

He sighed. "She is struggling. She is forced to relive every nightmare she ever faced, and her reward is people calling her a liar and demanding her head."

"They fear her," Wanda murmured.

"They despise the things she has done," he replied, "and some are too angry to see that she is not responsible for them."

Her face darkened. "I cannot believe I once allied myself with HYDRA. Hearing about what they did–"

Now it was Vision's turn to smooth away her frown lines. "You sought justice in your own way, then. You couldn't have known the extent of HYDRA's crimes when you asked for strength, and when it counted you turned your back on them."

Wanda dropped her head against the side of the couch and sighed. "It seems we're all atoning for something."

Vision dropped his head beside hers and for a few long moments they simply watched each other, forehead to forehead, just the two of them hiding from the world.

Wanda reached up to run her hands through Vision's hair – she didn't care what form he took, but she had to admit she liked these simple touches that weren't possible when he was in android form. And he looked really cute with mussed hair.

"We're watching out for her, you know," she said. Vision hesitated then leaned into her touch. As a rule they didn't usually talk about their mutual friends, so the  _we_ sounded loud in the small cabin. "No matter what happens, she's not alone."

"I know," Vision replied. "And neither are we."

 

* * *

 

January 9th, 2017  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Maggie's lawyers had decided to call a series of character witnesses. Not from her time at HYDRA but from  _now_ , which meant that during the pre-trial period there had been a legal battle about whether Tony Stark: billionaire, inventor, and Avenger, would be allowed to take the stand.

Mallory and the prosecution argued that he was too recognizable a public figure, that his role as a superhero meant that people would do whatever he said. But Diego had gotten to his feet and said: "Your honor this isn't about Iron Man. This is about my client, and whether or not the person who has gotten to know her character over the past few months,  _her brother_ , deserves to stand on her behalf as her character witness."

Moore had allowed it, with a strict warning for Tony to steer clear of any 'funny business'.

Finally the day arrived. Maggie had seen the video of Tony's Capitol Hill appearance, and though she'd given him a talking-to she was still worried he'd do something stupid and flashy like flip off the prosecution and dive out the courtroom window in the Iron Man armor. But the Tony Stark who approached the witness box today was seven years older. And those hadn't been easy years.

Grave-faced, he strode to the witness box in his expensive suit. He was still charming, sharing a quip with the bailiff as he stepped into the box, but he wasn't impatient or fidgeting. He swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then sat with one leg crossed over the other, his glasses folded on the witness box beside him.

Maggie could feel every eye in the courtroom trained on Tony, every ear straining for his words. It made her slightly uncomfortable – since the shooting she'd been more protective than usual of her brother, aware of everyone who shot him a second glance or looked at him funny. Having so many people staring at him made her instincts prickle.

Diego got to his feet. "Good morning Mr Stark. Thank you for coming today."

"No problem." Tony ran a hand over his beard then nodded for Diego to go ahead with his questions.

Diego folded his hands. "Mr Stark, how long have you known the defendant?"

Tony shifted and leaned one elbow on the edge of the witness box. "Well that's a complicated question," he began. "I met her for the first time when she was about six hours old. Spent the next five years trying to avoid her as much as I could. Then I thought she was dead for twenty five years. Met her again six months ago, and since then we've spent time together maybe…" he looked up. "What would you say, Maggie, about once every two days on average?"

Maggie dropped her face in her hand, and Judge Moore scolded Tony about addressing the defendant.

"Sorry," Tony said. "Probably once every two days, yeah."

"So you've gotten to know her pretty well?" Diego asked.

"I'd say so. We share 50% of our DNA so there's that, too."

Diego inclined his head. "Mr Stark, how would you describe my client's character? Is she, as the prosecution has put it, a cold-blooded, unempathetic monster with no moral compunction about killing?"

Tony took a breath. "Of course she isn't. She…" his face flickered, and he swallowed. "I've only really known her a few months but I feel we've gotten to know each other pretty well in that time – what with the lives we've lived, we've had a lot to catch up on."

Titters broke out from the gallery, and Maggie smiled.

Tony cocked his head. "I know a thing or two about accountability. About  _responsibility_ for people's lives. I don't know if you've heard, but I used to make weapons." There were more titters, and he shrugged. "Those weapons went out into the world and they killed people. I never saw those people's faces, I didn't really think about them. I never saw the inside of a courtroom because of what I did – in fact, the government paid me to do it. When I turned it all around and started protecting people, I had all those faceless people on my shoulders." He frowned. "Maggie saw the face of each person she killed. But she didn't do those things because she wanted to, or because she was being paid to. She did it because someone destroyed her identity for years and used her as a weapon against their enemies. So let's be very clear," he said, eyes suddenly ablaze. "I made weapons – I did that, fully conscious. But Maggie was made  _into_ a weapon." He paused, took a breath. "She's not a weapon any more. She's a person." His eyes lifted to take in Diego, the gallery full of people, and Maggie. "She's my sister."

Maggie felt the jury glancing between her and Tony but she couldn't take her eyes off him, off her brother. Her chest felt like it would burst.

"Tell us about the person Maggie Stark is today," Diego asked, his voice low.

Tony looked away from Maggie and cocked his head. "Well she isn't a killer. Yes, she's killed people, but that's not the person she is now. She  _cares_ about people. She's kind – probably a lot kinder than I am, which I guess isn't saying much. And everything she's done since I've known her, she's done to help people." He shrugged. "She's not the little girl I knew, and she's not the  _weapon_ that I see in those HYDRA files and videos. She's her own complicated, smart, funny person. And she's going to grieve for those people who died for the rest of her life. There's no escaping that."

For another fifteen minutes Diego got Tony to talk about the Maggie Stark he had gotten to know. He made jokes, sometimes at Maggie's expense, and sometimes hints of the old, arrogant Tony Stark came back, but overall Maggie could see that he'd captured the attention of the courtroom. He was making Maggie  _real_ in their eyes. So far they'd known her as a murderer and a monster. Now they knew about the Maggie who invented machines that helped people, the Maggie who cried in movies, and made friends with people, A.I.s and robots. Tony told them stories about Maggie that didn't make them cry – rather, some of the stories made them laugh. After so many days of pain, laughter was such a relief that it almost made Maggie dizzy.

Diego asked Tony about the two years Maggie had spent as a fugitive.

"Believe me, I wish she'd come straight to me," he said heavily. "But I understand why she didn't – she didn't even know who she was when she got out of HYDRA, and she spent years putting herself back together. That being said, I know she made the conscious decision to stay away."

"Why is that, Mr Stark?"

"She wanted to protect me. HYDRA was still around, in bits and pieces, and she knew that being dead was the best way to protect me from violence and retribution." Tony shot Diego a wry look. "She comes with a lot of baggage."

There were a few laughs from the gallery.

Diego raised an eyebrow. "And do you feel you need to be protected from Maggie?"

"Nope," Tony said, leaning back. "All of this" – he gestured widely, encompassing the courtroom and everything that had happened since Maggie's capture at Leipzig – "It's all totally worth it to have her back."

 

When Diego finished questioning Tony, Mallory got to his feet with squared shoulders and a firm look on his face.

"Mr Stark," he began. "When were you first aware that your sister was still alive?"

"Four days after the HYDRA mess in D.C.," Tony replied, meeting Mallory's gaze evenly.

"So by my count you knew who the Wyvern was months, maybe years before most intelligence organisations, and you didn't share that information. You tracked down data about the Wyvern in Québec, and you didn't share that either. Why is that?"

Tony frowned. "Are you kidding me with that question?"

"No, Mr Stark. I am not kidding you."

Tony stared back at the prosecutor for a few more moments, then sighed and leaned forward. "Look, we've all seen what was in the Québec data. When I was in that underground base looking at those videos I felt…" he shook his head, his eyes dark. "I can't describe the way I felt beyond… sick to my stomach. Furious. I didn't have my sister, just a bunch of videos of those monsters  _torturing_ her. I've been tortured and I didn't hold up very well against it–"

"Please stay on topic Mr Stark–" Mallory said, but Tony talked right over him. Maggie's stomach lurched.

"That was for three months, and I was thirty eight years old and the CEO of Stark Industries. Maggie was tortured for  _years,_ and she was  _five_ when it started. She never had a choice." His voice started to shake with emotion, so he took a deep breath. Maggie watched with one hand over her mouth. "So no, I wasn't going to make all of that public while I knew she was out there somewhere, free of HYDRA. I put it under lock and key because I thought it was about time she got to make her own decisions about things that affected her. So far she hasn't let me down." He looked over at Maggie, and the determined set to his face softened when he saw her brush away a tear.

Mallory raised an eyebrow. "Touching, Mr Stark. But you're an Avenger, one of our world's defenders. When you had information about one of HYDRA's assassins, information that would have been incredible useful to law enforcement agencies the world over, why didn't you release it?"

Diego and Andrea both opened their mouths, no doubt to object to the relevance of the question, but Tony met Mallory's eyes and spoke. "Would you? If it was your sister who you thought was dead?"

"I'm not the one in the witness box, Mr Stark–"

"Your honor," Diego said in an exasperated voice, "the prosecution is arguing with the witness."

Judge Moore leveled a look at Mallory. "Watch yourself, counselor."

"Look," Tony said, conveniently forgetting that someone had to ask him a question before he could speak, "I did everything I could to put an end to HYDRA. I went after their bases, their agents, all the shadowy places they'd hidden in. At the same time I was searching high and low for Maggie but I couldn't find her. It wasn't like I forgot that she was out there, I just couldn't… I'd just gotten her back. I couldn't throw her to the wolves again."

The troubled look on his face made Maggie's heart ache, and she leaned forward in her seat as if proximity would make this any easier. The gallery was silent, staring at Tony Stark as he bared his soul.

Mallory paced toward the witness box. "That is a testament to your character, Mr Stark. Your affection for your sister is clear, but how do you know she feels the same? How do you know she isn't just manipulating you? She's a very clever person."

"Not to be a brag, but I feel like I should point out that I'm pretty clever myself," Tony replied, and a few people in the gallery chuckled. "And I've had plenty of people try to manipulate me so I know how it goes. But really, why would Maggie need to manipulate me?"

Mallory shrugged. "Money. Protection. You're an Avenger, she's a HYDRA agent, I'm sure there are plenty of motives for manipulation there."

Tony rolled his eyes and held up three fingers. "Okay first, money? She's legally entitled to half our dad's fortune  _with interest_ , she doesn't need to buddy up to me to get that." He dropped a finger. "Protection? In the few months she's known me she's been imprisoned, indicted for murder, and shot. She spent two years on the run without me before that and she did just fine. So let's not pretend that she's here because she's got no other choice or that she needs to suck up to me for protection. She's here  _because_ of me, and because she wants to help people. And lastly…" he dropped a second finger, leaving him with his middle finger pointing right at Mallory. "If Maggie's trying to undermine the Avengers then she's the stupidest agent in existence because she's been living at our place for months and if anything, we're better for her being there."

" _Mr Stark,_ " rumbled Judge Moore, "please refrain from making rude gestures in my courtroom."

Tony looked at his raised middle finger and opened his mouth, as if he hadn't noticed it. "So sorry, your honor," he said, and dropped his hand. The titters that had been simmering in the gallery during his answer broke out into audible laughter until Moore put a stop to it.

Tony looked over at Maggie and raised his eyebrows, as if asking her how she was doing. She shook her head at him but couldn't help the fond smile on her lips.

Mallory recovered, barely managing to conceal his glare. "Mr Stark, you said yourself you've only known Ms Stark for a few months. Do you really think you can speak for her whole character based on such a short time?"

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "You're right. I'd be a better character witness if I'd known her for, say, thirty years. Oh  _wait_ ," he said, snapping his fingers, "that didn't happen, HYDRA kidnapped her and made her forget who I was."

"Mr  _Stark_ ," Moore warned, and Tony gave him another contrite apology. Mallory shot questions at Tony for another ten minutes, but eventually he realized that he wasn't going to get anything useful to the prosecution out of Tony, and excused him. Maggie's lawyers had specifically told Tony not to interact with Maggie directly after his testimony (" _No,_ Mr Stark, you may not give her a high five"), but on his way back to his seat he winked at her. Maggie rolled her eyes and smiled down at her lap, stunned once again at how impossibly lucky she'd gotten to have a brother who loved her that much.

Then she remembered that she'd  _specifically told him_ not to flip off the prosecution, and let out a long sigh.

 

* * *

 

_THE STARK SIBLINGS (Image): Tony and Maggie Stark walk side by side down the courthouse steps during the lunch break, after Mr Stark gives glowing character testimony in the Wyvern Trial._

 

WHiH World News panel: "Honestly Christine, even though it seems that Tony Stark remains incapable of appearing in public without making a few jokes, I was really struck by his honesty today. We got a look behind the curtain, not at the billionaire and Avenger, but at a  _brother_ who has experienced a lot of pain and grief, but also appears to have a rewarding and healthy relationship with his sister. Katherine, you look like you have something to say?"

"Oh, I do. I absolutely agree with you Will, we need more men in the world who can be so open about their affection and love. I honestly didn't expect that to come from Tony Stark but I have to say: I'm impressed."

 

* * *

DustinEPatz  
@dustydustin   
@tonystark should stick to Avenging and stop interfering with the justice system #wyverntrial #guilty #convict #celebritybias 10:52 AM - 9 January 2017  2134  7061 

 

* * *

 

The Daily Bugle headline:  _Tony Stark Admits He Was Tortured In Afghanistan In 2008_

 

* * *

Henry Fitzwilliam  
@henryfitzwilliamattorney   
Okay, but it's nearly impossible to trick Tony Stark into saying something that he doesn't want to. As a lawyer, going up against someone that smart and that charismatic, I don't think I'd even bother cross-examining. #wyverntrial  11:17 AM - 9 January 2017  8652  16.2K 

 

* * *

Joseph Holway  
@holwayjoseph   
@tonystark I hope u feel proud of urself for literally giving the justice system the middle finger today. Open your eyes people, he doesn't care about us or about justice. #wyverntrial #tyrant  11:24 AM - 9 January 2017  56  172 

 

* * *

 

The New York Bulletin:  _The defense has been telling us for days now that the person who committed those crimes was not Maggie Stark, but rather a 'weapon' manufactured by HYDRA. Today, for the first time, they showed us the person she is now.  
Mr Stark painted a picture of a funny, admittedly odd, smart, witty, kind woman who overcame a great deal of hardship to get to where she is today. Whether the jury believes that picture is the question, but this writer has been in the courtroom with Ms Stark for the past weeks. Aside from her recent panic attack she doesn't often speak, but when she does she is polite and considered. Of the two options: psychotic killer versus personable survivor, the Maggie Stark we see today appears more and more to be the latter._

 

* * *

 

lucy goosey  
@lucyandadog   
While reading about the #wyverntrial, my brother called to wish me a happy birthday, and then asked for $20. My birthday was four months ago. I need to get me a #rideordie brother like @tonystark 12:45 PM - 9 January 2017  8652  20.4K 

 

Iron Man  
@tonystark   
@lucyandadog I'm your brother now. 1:02 PM - 9 January 2017  50.2K  321K 

 

* * *

 

Part of the reason the pre-trial phase had lasted so long even with political pressure to hasten it along, was that there had been a long-lasting and hard-fought battle about character witnesses. About Tony, but also about three others Maggie's lawyers had called to provide character testimony: Pepper Potts, James Rhodes, and Vision.

The prospect of Vision giving testimony set its own international legal precedent, as they'd had to have a whole separate legal debate about whether an omnipresent android could be called as a witness. The court eventually ruled that it could be included, citing a bunch of legalese reasons that basically agreed that since Vision exhibited human traits, had a reciprocal relationship with Maggie and identified as a person, he could give testimony. The worldwide legal community lost their minds over the implications, but Maggie's case got on with business.

Pepper got in a bit of trouble with Stark Industries for giving testimony in a murder trial, but she basically told them to go screw themselves (nicely, but firmly), and started prepping with Maggie's lawyers.

There had been a big ruckus that all the remaining Avengers were going to speak on Maggie's behalf. The prosecution wouldn't stop arguing that it would bias the jury, but Judge Moore maintained that since the members of the Avengers were in the best position to give an account of Maggie's character, it was within Maggie's rights to have them defend her. Ross was pissed, but the Accords didn't say anything about the Avengers appearing as character witnesses.

And so the day came. Vision wore a suit, Rhodey his Air Force uniform, and Pepper came in her sharpest pantsuit. They all gave lovely character testimony, praising Maggie's intelligence, introspection, humor, and genuine kindness. At first everyone in the courtroom seemed a little wary of Vision with his purple skin and odd way of speaking, but by the end they were hanging onto his every word.

"Ms Stark is, objectively, a good person," he told Diego, his voice soft and his eyes calm. "And I am honored to have her as my friend."

Rhodey's testimony made three members of the jury cry, and when he was done he stood tall and proud in his exosuit and walked back to the gallery.

Pepper brought out a side to Maggie that Maggie didn't even know she had.

The prosecutor tried to trip them up and get them to say something bad about Maggie, but he didn't have much luck with an omnipresent android, a senior Air Force colonel with years of experience in political hearings, and the CEO of a major company who'd done more press conferences and interviews than she could count.

At the end of the day Maggie went home with all four of her character witnesses and made them dinner – a curry she'd learned to make in India. They drank and ate, and Maggie reflected that even if she went to prison at the end of all this, she knew that the family she'd made here would be with her wherever she went.

 

* * *

luv hulk 1991  
@katieblack   
You've gotta be doing something right as a person if you get the Avengers and Pepper Potts to stand up for you like that #wyverntrial  6:02 PM - 9 January 2017  642  2443

trey  
@thew1zard   
It's so obvious that the Wyvern has manipulated the weak Avengers. Sad. #wyverntrial  5:32 PM - 9 January 2017  842  3412 

 

* * *

 

10th January, 2017

Dr Nguyen took the stand the next day. With Andrea's guidance she reviewed the evidence of Maggie's psychological torture once more, but unlike the first psychologist Mai focused on Maggie  _now_ , rather than Maggie  _then._ Mai had of course asked Maggie what she was comfortable revealing to the public, and she went over some of the details of their many sessions with a professional and calm tone. Andrea asked for her to comment on Maggie's culpability while she was in HYDRA, and the likelihood of her presenting a threat to others now. Mai stated that aside from the threat of the trigger words, which weren't Maggie's fault, she was more likely to help the people around her than hurt them.

She ended with: "In my professional opinion, there is no feasible way that Ms Stark is morally or mentally guilty of these crimes. She simply wasn't in the driver's seat. But she showed an immense force of will when she broke out of that programming, and in her determination to be a person."

"And has she achieved that goal?" asked Andrea. "Is Ms Stark a person?"

"Oh, certainly. It hasn't been easy, and she will never be free of the trauma she has suffered, but Ms Stark is a person within her own right. One who, in my professional opinion, has the capacity to bring a lot of good to this world."

 

* * *

 

11th January, 2017

BBC News (World)  
@BBCWorld   
Today, a long awaited moment in the #wyverntrial: Margaret Stark to take the stand in her own defense. This will be the first time Ms Stark has spoken publicly since her now-infamous press conference. Stay with us for a live feed.  8:42 AM - 11 January 2017  162  242 

 

The Wall Street Journal  
@WSJ   
Crowds outside Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse larger and louder than ever today. Security is heavy after the shooting two weeks ago. Margaret Stark testimony begins in one hour: (video) 8:55 AM - 11 January 2017  82  142 


	66. Chapter 66

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, everyone!
> 
> Just a quick reminder that the next chapter will be in one week. And I'm about to get on a plane so I may be slow replying to reviews, sorry!
> 
> Also: trigger warning in this chapter for discussion of a past attempted sexual assault, and disbelieving victims. If you think you'll have an issue then PM me and I can let you know more :)
> 
> Edit: you guessed it, tweet formatting

 

11th January 2017  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

"How're you doing, Maggot?"

"Great. I feel great."

"I don't think I believe you."

"How dare you. Pepper, how do I look?"

"You look great, Maggie. Very…"

"Innocent?" suggested Tony.

"I was going to say  _professional._ "

Maggie looked between Pepper and Tony, trying to draw strength from their confidence in her. Rhodey and Vision were both back at the Avengers Facility – they'd wanted to be here, but Avengers analysts had gotten a lead on the group who hired Tony's would-be-assassin so they had to stay behind to follow that up.

Too soon, the door to the small meeting room opened to admit Andrea and Diego. "We've got to head in now. Are you ready?"

There was a long silence until Maggie whispered: "I guess I have to be."

"You're going to do great," Tony said, patting her on the shoulder as he got to his feet.

"I don't think I believe you," she muttered, but stood and followed him out the door.

They'd talked about her giving testimony for weeks – her lawyers weren't sure it was the best option, but given the weight of evidence against her they decided that Maggie needed to speak for herself. Which was good, because Maggie wouldn't have let them talk her out of it.

It wasn't that she was looking forward to putting her trauma and memories on the line so publicly, but this was what she'd promised the victims of her crimes: accountability and truth. So she was going to do it, her own fragile mental health be damned.

 

* * *

 

"Your honor, I now call Margaret Stark to the stand."

Everyone knew this was coming but whispers still broke out across the courtroom as Maggie got to her feet, smoothed down her blazer and walked with her head held high to the witness box.

She'd thought she was getting used to people staring at her, but it was one thing to sit behind the defense desk and another to stand in front of a sea of faces all waiting for her to bare her soul.

The bailiff approached and met her eyes. "Do you affirm that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? This you do affirm under pains and penalties of perjury?"

"I do."

The bailiff nodded and she took her seat in the witness box – Tony hadn't been lying when he told her it was surprisingly comfortable. A hush fell, and Maggie focused on what her lawyers had told her:  _stay focused, be truthful, try to relax, and take your time._  She took long, slow breaths, but couldn't ease the sick feeling in her stomach.

Diego stood and approached the open space in front of the witness box. He met her eyes, shooting her a subtle encouraging look, and then spoke. "Please state your full name, date of birth, address and occupation for the court."

_Easy start. Sort of._ "Margaret Abigail Stark, June 2nd 1986. Avengers Facility, and… um, unemployed."

A mutter went through the courtroom before hush fell again, as everyone focused on her. Maggie kept her shoulders straight and didn't look away from Diego. Her heart pounded against her chest but she kept her face calm – but not too calm, since Diego and Andrea had warned her against resorting to careful blankness when faced with strangers.  _Your emotions are honest, Maggie. If there's any time to let them show, it's now._

One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.

"Ms Stark," Diego began. "You're here to speak on your own behalf in what has been a long and traumatic trial focused not only on your crimes but on the many crimes committed against you. I'm going to begin with a simple question, one which I believe will strike at the truth. Ms Stark, please tell us: what happened?"

Maggie looked out at the full gallery of the courtroom. She looked from her brother's face, to Pepper's, to her lawyers. Her eyes slid across the jury and then up to Judge Moore. She breathed in.

And then, not for the first time or the last, she told her story.

 

* * *

 

"A HYDRA agent killed my parents and took me to a base in Canada: a small island off the coast of Québec…"

 

* * *

 

 

"… stood around watching as Sanders injected me with the blue serum. At first it felt cold, like ice seeping into my veins, then all of a sudden it  _burned._ Like I was being set on fire from the inside out. I… I screamed and begged them to stop, but they just stared at me." Maggie avoided Tony's eyes. She didn't want to see the pain there, and she knew it was only going to get worse. "I passed out after about a minute, and when I woke up I was different."

 

* * *

 

 

"I thought I could trick them somehow. Get healed and then try to slip away, or call the police…" she shook her head. "It was naïve. But I didn't realize how foolish I was being until they strapped me into that chair. And then it was too late."

"Naïve? How old were you again, Ms Stark?"

She swallowed. "Five." She could feel everyone staring at her.

 

* * *

 

"It's hard to remember things from that time because they were wiping me so often. But I still remember that they'd… they'd chained two innocent people in a cell, side by side. The first time it was a man and a woman, both middle-aged. I didn't know it at the time but their names were Harold Tremblay and Maria Macdonald. They were so  _scared_ , crying and begging to be let go."

Deep breath. "My trainer put electrodes on my chest and a gun in my hand, and told me to kill one of them. I remember looking from the gun, to the people in front of me, and I asked… I asked  _why._ They never gave me an answer. The soldiers in the room shot Harold and Maria, and they electrocuted me." Maggie touched the points on her chest where the electrodes had once been. "After they wiped me, they brought in two more people, and did the same thing. I questioned them again, and the same thing happened. After that, I did what they said."

Maggie took a shuddering breath. "I remember that changed something in my mind. That was when I started to believe what they said about me, when I believed that they'd made me into a weapon. Because if I didn't have a choice, what else did that make me?"

"And how old were you at the time?" Diego asked softly.

"Six."

More gasps. Maggie didn't know how her age managed to surprise them each time.

 

* * *

 

"I felt the hot metal cooling on my bones, felt them welding metal together  _inside_ me." Her voice shook. "I couldn't move, I could only scream and stare at the floor, where my blood was dripping down." She heard people leaving the courtroom, but she didn't look at them.

"Didn't they give you any anesthetic?" Diego asked. "Surely it would have been simpler to knock you out?"

Maggie shook her head. "My metabolism burns through drugs too quickly. For such a long surgery using that much anesthetic would have been… costly." Her face darkened. "And  _unnecessary._ "

"We've all seen what videos remain of those procedures, are you saying you were awake for  _all_ of them?"

"Yes." Her voice was hard.

"And how old were you?"

"For the first surgery I was seven. The second time, for the wing moorings, I was nine."

"How did you recover from such an invasive procedure?"

Maggie swallowed. "They said that movement would compromise the way my muscles and skin integrated with the metal, so they told me to lie on the table."

"For how long?"

"Twenty seven hours." She was ready for the gasps this time.

"Twenty seven hours," Diego echoed, his face crumpled with dismay. "Lying on your front after surgery, with no food or medical attention?"

"That's right."

 

* * *

 

Maggie couldn't even make herself sound detached. Each word brought back sights, smells and sounds from those cold years in the Québec tunnels. She tried to keep her voice measured and strong, but it kept cracking and tears kept slipping from her eyes unbidden.

Diego's low, empathetic voice got her through, with his repeated utterances of  _take your time,_ and  _of course, take a minute._

Maggie couldn't look at Tony but she felt his eyes on her the whole time. She felt his rage, his grief, his pain, crackling across the space between them. It broke her heart.

 

They went over the various scans of her body, from Québec and from more recently. When she took off her shoes and demonstrated her heel spurs for the court there were gasps and fascinated stares. Maggie's skin crawled.

 

* * *

 

"Before we arrived at the Red Room the Project Leader told me to kill one of the girls. I crushed the throat of the second girl who went up against me. Her name was Zoya. I never learned her last name."

 

"We were there for almost two years because they wanted me to learn infiltration and espionage – I didn't act like a human, you see, so I didn't know how to assimilate. They taught me at the Red Room by getting me to imitate normal social interactions. Madame B said I was still too blank to be truly convincing."

"There were other girls at the Red Room, yes? Did you ever form any connections with them?"

"No. They were being manipulated in their own way, and I was kept apart from them." She bowed her head. "They tried to kill me four different times."

"And how old were you?"

The question was starting to grate on her nerves, but she understood why Diego kept asking.

She sighed. "I turned nine at the Red Room."

 

* * *

 

Mary  
@marymaryquitecontrary   
I’m sick to my stomach. How could a child go through so much horror and have no one try to help her? #wyverntrial #innocent 10:42 AM - 11 January 2017  100  222 

 

Olly ~ smokes  
@ollyollyolly   
Does anyone believe this? #wyverntrial #liar 11:00 AM - 11 January 2017  62  189 

 

call me callie  
@yesmaam5   
You know how sometimes you hear things that change the way you view the world? Change a part of yourself? That’s how I felt today at the #wyverntrial listening to Maggie Stark talk about her past. 11:32 AM - 11 January 2017  302  672 

 

 

* * *

 

"Horrified Silence": Attendees of the Wyvern Trial Relate the Mood Inside the Courtroom during Maggie Stark's Testimony.

 

* * *

 

Maggie's testimony lasted days. Once they had gone over her stolen childhood and the end of her time at Québec, they went over the many crimes she had committed.

Maggie went into detail about everything she'd done, laying out facts, names, and dates. Going into such detail wasn't a great idea for defending herself but that wasn't why she was doing this. This was her chance to get everything on public record, to free HYDRA's secrets from her shifting memories and lay them in the light. The memories hurt, but Maggie felt a grim satisfaction even as her voice went hoarse from speaking. She'd said she was here for the truth. This was her chance.

The prosecutor kept trying to object: for relevance or for speculation, but each time he did Diego calmly said "Your honor, the prosecution is charging my client with these crimes, it is her right to talk about them." And every time, Judge Moore overruled the prosecution.

Throughout her testimony Diego kept her on track about her culpability: he asked her how she'd felt about the crimes at the time ("I didn't feel anything"), the rare moments where she'd been confused, or conflicted about what was happening and how her handlers dealt with that, and how she felt about what she'd done now.

Maggie went home each evening exhausted, and slept through fitful nightmares before she woke up in the morning and went back to court to continue where she'd left off.

 

* * *

 

Greg Jeffries  
@gregjeffries   
You know, I wasn't that optimistic when Maggie Stark said she was going to provide us with everything she knew about HYDRA's influence. But after the last few days, I've got to say that I've been pleasantly surprised. #wyverntrial 10:06 AM- 12 January 2016  1042  5439 

 

Sam Carmichael  
@katerwauling   
Would be nice if Maggie Stark could stay on topic for once #wyverntrial 1:24 PM - 12 January 2019  82  342 

 

 

* * *

 

_HERACLES User Alert 01/16/17: Please note that this site has been updated to include court transcripts from Margaret Stark's testimony in the United States v. Stark criminal trial. If you have any questions or comments on this new information, please contact the site admin._

 

* * *

 

"Tell us about the day you broke away from HYDRA."

Maggie took a deep breath. After going over decades of crimes, she was going to have to take a step back into her mindset on those Helicarriers.

"I had a… mission. To protect Project Insight."

 

She tried to explain her thoughts as best as she could without giving too much away about her feelings for Bucky – she hadn't  _had_ feelings for Bucky at the time, beyond a confused sort of fascination, so she managed fairly well. Trying to put herself back in that headspace of  _designation: Wyvern, purpose: mission_  was difficult. It reminded her of snow on her cheeks, lightning in her mind, and  _ready to comply._

The court hung on to her every word.

She told them about her agony and confusion in the broken hull of the Helicarrier, two decades of programming battling against her long-smothered humanity. She told them how that clash of missions had nearly torn her mind apart. She told them about how she'd remembered her name and then went to save the Winter Soldier, about how the Quinjets got in her way but she hadn't destroyed them because she'd been fascinated by Steve Rogers' mission:  _People are going to die, Buck. I can't let that happen._

She told them about how she and the Winter Soldier had quietly walked away from HYDRA, both of them aware that they'd cut all ties and yet too afraid to say it out loud.

She told them about her pact with the man named Bucky.

She told them about feeling  _free._

 

"I'd known myself as nothing but a weapon for years. But I remember… I remember looking at myself in the mirror after I escaped from HYDRA, and seeing a  _person._ It startled me, looking into my eyes and seeing someone looking back at me. It scared me. But then I made a decision to be a person from that day forward." She swallowed. "I had to learn how to be one. I had to learn how to have choices, from simple things like what to eat and wear, and what my favorite color was, to big things like looking back and realizing that if someone asked me to do all the horrible things I'd done again, without the chair and the words, I wouldn't do it. I didn't want that."

"Why did you want this trial, Ms Stark?"

Maggie leaned back in her seat and stopped herself from running her hands over her face just in time. "I… I asked for this process because I wanted the truth to come out. That's all. And I hope I've achieved that."

"And what will you do if you're vindicated?" Diego asked.

Maggie blinked. He'd warned her that he'd be asking her that question, but with the prospect of all the other things she was going to testify about she hadn't put a lot of thought into it. The trial had taken up so much of her time that the idea of having a future seemed… impossible.

She swallowed. "I… I've only really been a person for two years. I'm still figuring lots of things out. But if I were vindicated… I'd focus on my mental health, particularly on researching how to get rid of my trigger words. But there's more than that." She bit her lip. "I have… a varied set of skills. Some of those I was born with, some of them were given to me by HYDRA. Some of them I've learned since then. I intend to use those skills to help people whether I'm vindicated or not." Diego frowned at that, but Maggie had promised to tell the truth. "I can make things. Tony and I made a line of prosthetics-"

"Objection! Irrelevant and prejudicial!" called Mallory.

"Agreed. That was a hypothetical question, Ms Stark," said Judge Moore.

"Sorry. I guess I'm just trying to say that if I've learned anything since escaping from HYDRA it's that I'm better when I'm helping people. And I have the ability to do that. So… that's what I'd do." She shrugged to indicate that she was finished, and Diego smiled at her.

"Thank you, Ms Stark. No further questions."

Maggie sat back in her seat and sighed.

"Let's take a recess before cross-examination," Judge Moore said, and the courtroom filled with noise as people got to their feet and started talking.

Maggie climbed out of the witness box and walked back to the defense desk, where Tony met her and put an arm around her shoulders. But Maggie couldn't join in the snarky banter he fired off because of the tension winding up her spine and across her shoulders. She might have given her testimony, but there was still cross-examination to come. A hard pit of dread formed in her stomach.

 

* * *

 

William Furlow - New York Bulletin  
@willfurlow   
Maggie Stark is honest and concise, something that's refreshing to see in a courtroom. It'll be interesting to see how she holds up against a more hostile questioner. 9:34 AM- 13 January 2017  243  564 

 

anarchist pride  
@an0nym0u5   
Margaret Stark is a monster #wyverntrial 10:15 AM - 13 January 2017  4  24 

 

 

* * *

 

The New York Bulletin:  _No one person should have to suffer a percentage of what Margaret Stark has suffered. And what have we done? Made her relive that trauma in an attempt to convict her for crimes HYDRA is guilty of._

 

* * *

 

Mallory's cross-examination was, predictably, uncomfortable and upsetting. It lasted the better part of the day, in which he brought up each victim Maggie was charged with killing and accused her of selecting them for death, planning their murders, and getting paid for it.

To each angry, leading question Maggie could only reply "I didn't have a choice." After a while it started to sound flimsy to her own ears.

At one point he changed tactics.

"Why should we trust any of your memories, Ms Stark?" he demanded.

She frowned at him. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well if, as your lawyers have claimed, your memories were destroyed by the Memory Suppression Machine, why should we trust any that you've 're-remembered'? Isn't it possible that you have misremembered or worse, generated false memories?"

Maggie shrugged. "You can ask me about the details of missions I went on and match them up with verifiable data, if you like."

Mallory frowned. "Just answer the question, Ms Stark. Is it possible your memories could be flawed?"

She bowed her head. "Yes."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Diego and Andrea share a triumphant look, and she frowned. But then she realized: if Mallory was accepting that Maggie's memories had been destroyed by HYDRA, then that was just one more piece of evidence that spoke toward Maggie being their victim. And he'd done it in front of the jury.

_Huh._

 

By mid-afternoon, Maggie felt exhausted but concentrated on staying sharp and not letting Mallory talk her into a corner.

He paced in front of her, hands on his hips. Right now he was going down a tangent of trying to prove that she had free will over who lived or died. "Ms Stark, do you really expect us to believe that you never killed anyone unless you were ordered to?"

Maggie opened her mouth to say no, but then something occurred to her. Her brow creased and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.  _The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth._

"I… I only ever killed one person that I wasn't ordered to."

Mallory's head jumped up. "Oh?"

Diego and Andrea stared at her in barely-concealed panic. Maggie swallowed and continued. "He was one of the HYDRA agents at the base in Quebec. I would have been… fourteen." She shifted in her seat, uncomfortably hot. "He ordered me to follow him to his room. I did. But then he – he touched me, and ordered me to" –she swallowed again– "he ordered me to…" she squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't say the words that still haunted her. She could feel the courtroom holding its breath.

"He tried to sexually assault me," she eventually said, keeping her eyes shut. She could feel Tony's eyes on her but she ignored him. She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes to look down into her lap. "I killed him. I wasn't scared of him at the time – I remember thinking that he was acting against protocol, and that his aim was… was to injure the asset, which was… not optimal." Her face twisted and so did her heart as she recalled the way she used to think. Looking back now she was terrified for that girl, alone in that base.

Mallory cocked his head. "You didn't feel scared?"

She looked up at him. "No. I didn't feel anything."

Mallory clearly didn't know what to do with that; he hadn't been expecting her to confess to  _another_ crime. He eyed the page of notes in his hand, then glanced up and said "so you really expect us to believe that – aside from this instance – you never chose targets, that you were only acting on orders from above?"

Silence fell. Maggie was still adjusting from what she'd admitted to the whole freaking world, taking a few moments to focus on breathing and slowing her heartrate. Hearing that question after speaking about what had happened was… jarring.

Even Mallory could tell how tone deaf his question was. Maggie saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes, the way he glanced at the jury and saw the horror in their faces from her original answer.

But he had asked her a question, so Maggie swallowed and said: "No. I never chose targets. Sometimes I was ordered to search for certain things or run internet sweeps, and those would highlight potential targets, but it was just… just data, to me. My handlers chose who died. And sent me to carry it out."

There was a strange note in the air now after her admission and then Mallory's subsequent question. Maggie glanced at the windows – they were screened to prevent pictures being taken from outside, but the sunlight streaming through helped to soothe her frayed nerves.

Mallory changed tack completely. "We've heard a lot about your so-called 'trigger words', Ms Stark. Tell me: would those words still work on you today?"

Her skin crawled, and she wasn't quite able to contain her shiver. "Yes."

"I see. And does anyone know what those words are?"

"No."

"Do you?"

Maggie met his eyes. "Yes."

He frowned. "But you haven't told anyone? Not even the people trying to help you, such as your therapist?" There was a light note of confusion in his voice, as if he was asking an obvious question.

" _No_ ," she replied.

"Why is that? Surely if you told someone they would be able to help you?"

"It's possible to make progress on removing the trigger words without knowing what they are," she bit out. "It's about  _how_ they were implanted, not about the actual words themselves. So I'm not going to tell  _anyone_ my trigger words, because that's far too risky for myself, for the person I tell, and for the people around me."

Mallory's eyes glinted. "You're saying that you're dangerous."

Her heart skipped a beat. "We have procedures in place if that happens, I'll be isolated and knocked out in an instant–"

"Ms Stark, you're telling me that there is a series of words that could turn you into some kind of cold, emotionless killing machine, and there's nothing you can do to prevent that from happening? How is that  _not_ dangerous?"

Maggie sat back in her chair, reeling.

"Objection," called Andrea in a cold voice, "Mr Mallory is  _clearly_  arguing with the witness."

"Sustained," Judge Moore said, stone faced.

"My apologies," Mallory said. "I'll ask the question more simply: Ms Stark, are you a danger to the people around you?"

She dropped her gaze and whispered: "Yes."

 

After another half hour of questions, Mallory changed tack again.

"And what about the Winter Soldier?"

Maggie didn't let herself freeze, or gasp, or in any way reveal that her stomach had lurched and her palms were suddenly sweating. Andrea and Diego had briefed her on what to do if this came up: don't lie, obviously, but also don't show any emotion. That would show Mallory that Bucky was a weakness to be exploited. So she just cocked her head and asked: "What about him?"

Mallory gave her an unimpressed look. "The Winter Soldier and the Wyvern were seen as a matched pair for a great deal of your time in HYDRA. You appeared out of the blue at around the same time he did, and you've said yourself that you were on the run with him–"

Diego cleared his throat. "Your honor, what exactly is the prosecution asking? What does this have to do with the charges on the docket?" Maggie used the brief pause to collect her thoughts. As she did she caught a glimpse of Tony's face – he watched the proceedings with a tense face and dark eyes.

"Allow me to rephrase," Mallory said before Moore could make a ruling on the objection. "The Winter Soldier–"

"That's not his name."

He paused. "I'm sorry?"

Maggie grit her teeth and tried to slow her beating heart. "The 'Winter Soldier' is the name HYDRA gave him."

Mallory's eyes narrowed. "Of course. Ms Stark you perpetrated multiple homicides with  _Sergeant James Barnes_ as your accomplice, did you not?"

One breath. Two. "He didn't want it either, they'd been controlling him for  _seventy years_ –"

"– that's convenient–"

Andrea shot to her feet. "Your honor, Mr Mallory is blatantly arguing with the witness–"

"Let's all calm down," Moore rumbled, then turned to Mallory. "Counsel, get to the point or move on."

Mallory nodded and turned to Maggie once more. She tried to unclench her fists under the table. "You shielded Sergeant Barnes from law enforcement when he was a wanted fugitive, didn't you?"

Blank face. Calm voice. "They attempted lethal force against him for a crime he didn't commit."

"So you thought you'd take justice into your own hands?"

"Mr Mallory–" Moore started, but Maggie just raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't think he deserved to die."

Moore cleared his throat loudly, and both Maggie and Mallory fell silent. "Mr Mallory. Please contain yourself to questions relating to the crimes on the charge sheet. Ms Stark, I'll thank you not to interrupt me."

Mallory's eyes flicked imperceptibly to the jury and back, then he straightened his shoulders and changed the topic once more. As Maggie responded to the relatively safer line of questioning ("how can you say you had no choice for over twenty years") she allowed her gaze to drift toward the defense table and the first row of the gallery. Andrea and Diego watched on with firm faces, ready to object to Mallory's questions at the drop of a hat. Andrea caught her eye and gave her a quick nod.  _Good job._

Behind them, Tony watched with a clenched jaw. Maggie met his eye for just a moment, afraid of what she would find, but when he saw her looking his eyes warmed and he shot her a thumbs up. Something untwisted in her gut, and she turned her full attention back to the prosecutor.

 

After that, Mallory went back to trying to get her to admit she was a manipulative sociopath. He cast seeds of doubt over everything she said. Then he went back to calling her a contract killer.

"Tell the truth Ms Stark, you murdered those people and you were paid for it!" he demanded.

Maggie's eyes narrowed.  _Keep swinging._ "No, I wasn't." She could see him opening his mouth to ask another inflammatory question so she spoke before he could. "Look, I killed those people."

The frank statement got Mallory to shut up for one goddamn second, and the sudden silence echoed in the courtroom.

Maggie held up her hands. "These hands ended their lives." She looked at her palms and fingers, all of a sudden hit by a rush of exhaustion. "But I  _didn't want that._ If I could I'd go back and save every one of them. I see their faces every night and I want – I want… I want to save them. But I can't."

"Ms Stark," Mallory said. "How can we believe anything you say?"

She ignored him. "I've been wrestling with this question of my guilt for years now, and… at the end of the day all I can say to keep myself sane is that the person I am, the person I discovered once I broke out of HYDRA's programming… that person doesn't kill people. That person is repulsed by everything HYDRA was and did. She –  _I_ , will do everything I can to make up for the years I spent as the Wyvern. But if that's not enough… I get it." She sighed and sank back into her seat. "I understand."

Mallory shot a few more questions at her after that, but he wasn't asking anything new and Maggie wasn't saying anything new, so Judge Moore eventually put a stop to it.

Maggie trudged back to the defense desk feeling as if she'd spent ten years inside that witness box.

"You've spoken up for yourself and your victims, and you did great," Diego murmured as she sat down next to him with glassy eyes. "You don't have to do that ever again.  _Estoy muy orgulloso de ti_." [" _I'm very proud of you._ "]

 

* * *

 

jan with a plan  
@janontoast   
The #wyverntrial prosecutor kinda seemed like an asshole today. 5:34 PM - 13 January 2017  3456  11.2K 

 

James Philmore  
@philmorethoughts   
Finally someone cut through Maggie Stark's lies in the #wyverntrial - a win for justice, a win for the victims! 5:22 PM - 13 January 2017  202  756 

 

 

* * *

 

WHiH Reporter Chess Roberts: "Prosecutor Mallory's line of questioning at times seemed confused or overly aggressive, but ultimately he succeeded in casting doubt over the verity of Ms Stark's words. From the witness box, Ms Stark largely kept her cool though we saw outbreaks of emotion such as when she described an attempted sexual assault against her in her early teens, and her thoughts about her own guilt. We saw a very powerful battle of wills in the courtroom today, and at this stage it's impossible to say who the jury believes."

 

CNN Panel Commentator: "The question isn't whether she's guilty or not. It's about whether we as a people are comfortable with having someone in our midst who, at the mere mention of a few words, could murder any of us at the drop of a hat."

"But that's the thing, Bill. On the one hand you have someone who's at risk of being flipped into a completely obedient killer, and on the other hand you have Maggie Stark, someone who's impressed us all with the way she fervently pushes for the truth, her frank honesty, and her remarkable recovery after spending years under HYDRA. Do we punish someone like that for something she has no control over?"

"It's not about punishing her, Katherine, it's about our protection."

 

* * *

 

Once court let out, Andrea put a hand on Maggie's shoulder. "Let's find a meeting room and debrief."

"Good idea," said Diego past the pen in his mouth as he reviewed his notes from the day.

"Hey," murmured Pepper. She and Tony had approached the defense desk. Maggie glanced up at them and saw concern and empathy written across their faces. She tried to shoot them an encouraging look, but she was too tired.

"Can we get you anything?" Pepper asked.

Maggie dropped her head onto her folded arms. "How about a mercy killing?" she groaned.

"We'll get you a coffee," Pepper replied. "Come on Tony, I'm sure they've got lots to talk about after today." Tony did as he was told, though as they left on their coffee quest he kept glancing over his shoulder at Maggie with a crease between his brows.

Once Maggie had followed Diego and Andrea to a private meeting room, they reviewed her testimony.

"You know," Andrea said, "It's actually a good thing that Mallory asked those questions about the Memory Suppression Machine and the trigger words."

"Didn't feel like a good thing," Maggie grumbled. "And he's not wrong, I  _am_ dangerous."

"That's besides the point – he showed today that he doesn't think he can dispute that the machine and the words were real, and that HYDRA used them to manipulate you. That means the jury will accept them as well."

Maggie propped her chin up with one hand as Andrea and Diego talked her through her testimony, reassuring her that she hadn't tanked her whole case and praising her level-headedness.

"So let's see," Diego eventually said, leaning back in his chair. "Your testimony is over, which means we have… one more witness, and then that's it. We'll question the witness after the weekend and then rest our case."

"Agreed," Andrea said with a nod.

Maggie swallowed. She'd almost forgotten how close they were to being finished. The prospect of it all being over – the roulette of witnesses, the anger and intense scrutiny – gave her a gut-churning feeling that was part relief, part dread. Her uncertain future loomed before her.

"Why did you decide to take my case?" she blurted. Diego and Andrea turned to her. "Other than my brother's money," she added.

Diego and Andrea shared a glance, eyebrows raised.

"Why do you ask now?"

Maggie put her head in her hands. "All of this… I knew at the start that this was going to be a big, messy, painful trial, but I was still surprised by how massive it got. And I think you knew what was coming, so… why? Why did you take my case?"

Diego rubbed his beard. "Well… I got into law to help people. I know that's unusual for a lot of lawyers. But I got distracted. Went for the big clients, with big money." He gestured to his patent leather briefcase and tailored suit, then nodded at Andrea. "Andrea and I made it to senior positions in another firm, but we realized we'd lost our way. So we cut our ties, opened a new firm, and used that big money to start helping the people we got into law in the first place for." Andrea flashed Diego a rare smile.

Maggie eyed them both. "So how do I fit into that?"

"To be honest," Diego said, "when we heard that Tony Stark was looking to hire us, I wasn't sure. That's a whole realm of politics and media that could be harmful for our firm, and for what purpose? Money? Then I looked at your file, and I realized that you weren't a hardened criminal hiding behind her brother's money. I realized you were someone who deserved our help."

Maggie thought about it, then looked up from under her eyelashes. "And Andrea, your  _relatives_ had nothing to do with it?"

"No," Andrea replied, eyes glinting. "And I told Diego about the connection in our first discussion about the case."

"Andrea is an incredible lawyer," Diego continued, a hint of a smile at his lips. "She focuses on facts and the law over how the case impacts her, and we both agreed that the connection shouldn't matter. Andrea fights just as hard for you as she would for any of our clients. Granted, you give us a bit more work to do than our other clients…"

Maggie smiled and ducked her head. "Well. However this goes… thank you. Really."

"You're very welcome," Diego said. "We couldn't have asked for a better client."

At that, the door swung open.

"Maggie!" Tony called. "I got you three different kinds of coffee because I couldn't decide–"

"Because you couldn't remember her favorite kind–" Pepper cut in.

"And Pepper and I had a small disagreement about what coffee you like, so here: do you want the latte, the iced frappuccino or the espresso?" He thrust the tray at her, trying to conceal the way his eyes darted over her face, assessing how she was doing.

Maggie beamed at him. "I'll take all three."

 

* * *

 

That night, Maggie lay on her bed back at the Avengers facility and stared at the pale grey ceiling. She was reminded of lying in the exact same spot a few months ago, after her and Tony's first outing around the facility – like then, her thoughts flew in every direction.

She missed Vision – he was in South America following up leads about the people who had tried to have Tony shot (no one would tell her anything about it, but she could tell that there was a lot going on she wasn't hearing about – it seemed the assassination attempt led back to some very bad people). Vision said he would be back before the jury went into deliberation, but she wished she could have some time with him before then. Because it could be the last time–

Maggie shook the thought away. Pepper, Rhodey, and Tony were here, and they'd all cleared their weekends to spend time with her. She'd agreed to another training session with Peter early tomorrow morning, so she tried to occupy her mind with planning out drills to run with him.

But then her thoughts turned back to the inevitable:  _this could be the last time I train Peter. This weekend could be the last one I spend at the facility. The last one I spend with my family._

The thought turned her stomach, and the blood drained from her face. She was  _terrified_ , and normally when she was terrified she could do something about it: fight her way out, or go through her therapy exercises. But now there was nothing left to do but to wait.

She closed her eyes.  _Focus on getting a good night's sleep_ , she instructed herself, feeling echoes of Mr Jarvis and her mother in the words.  _And then make the most of the time you have left._

 

* * *

 

Maggie woke up the next morning to a staticky crackle.

She blinked awake just in time to see the lights in her room flicker to life, and her window cleared to show the grey light of dawn over the forest.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.?" She mumbled, pushing her hair out of her face.

But instead of F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s comforting accented voice, the speakers resounded with a male voice that Maggie didn't recognize:

" _Verre._ " [ _"Glass."_ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorryyyyyy! See you next Friday ;)


	67. Chapter 67

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my lovelies it's earlyish but I missed you and this story! Thank you all for your patience this week, I am sorry about the cliffhanger. Thanks as well for all your wonderful comments last chapter as well, I can't wait to show you what's next :)
> 
> Note on this chapter: if it's not translated, it means the same thing in English.

 

Maggie's every hair stood on end. She woke up in an instant, cold sweat on her forehead, stomach churning, but she barely had a second to think  _did I actually just hear_   _that_ before–

" _Transmission_."

"No, no, no,  _no_ ," she gasped as she sprang out of bed. "Stop–"

" _Affamé._ " [ _"Starving."_ ]

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.!" Maggie called, whirling to where she knew there was a hidden camera. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., Doomsday protocol alpha, shut it–"

" _Sept._ " [ _"Seven."_ ]

The words tugged at long dormant threads in Maggie's mind. She wailed and dropped to her knees. " _No_ ," she breathed, and brought her wrist to her face. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., activate the–"

The Manacle's green LED light had gone out.

" _Vieux_ ," [ _"Old,"_ ] said the man's voice, low and menacing. Maggie stared dumbly at the hunk of useless metal on her wrist, shaking from head to toe. " _Sécurité_." [ _"Safety."_ ]

"This is a dream," she whispered, desperate for it to be true. Her mind was cold, her very thoughts shocked into stillness.

" _Trois_." [ _"Three."_ ]

Not a dream.  _Three words left, Stark_. Maggie stumbled to her feet and glanced around wildly, her breath sharp in her throat and her heart pounding as if it wanted to escape her body.  _Think, damn you._  But the words were already taking hold, monster's claws sinking into the flesh of her brain.

" _Tunnel_."

A half-sob, half-growl erupted from Maggie's lips and she broke into a sprint, hitting nearly full speed before she allowed herself to collide with the bullet-proof window. Her head  _thunked_ against the glass and she bounced back to the ground.

She registered pain, and blood trickling into her eye. But that meant she was awake.

" _Digne_." [ _"Worthy."_ ]

As Maggie dizzily sat up, her own gasping breath echoing in her ears, she reflected that the man sounded  _triumphant._ Could he see her? She whirled to the hidden camera and blinked through her bloody vision.

"Please!" she shouted. The words dug their claws deeper into her mind, plunging into the core of humanity she'd built for herself over these years. She couldn't let them take that humanity away from her. " _P_ _lease,_ " she sobbed, almost a whisper.

The next word was a whip-crack, a battle-cry: " _Quatre-vingts_!" [ _"Eighty!"_ ]

 

"Wyvern?" came the man's crackly voice, wonderingly.

The Wyvern got to her feet and wiped blood out of her eyes. "Ready to comply."

 

* * *

 

All at once, the previously-locked doors across the facility slid open. Pepper and Tony spilled out of their bedroom, wild-eyed, just as the unfamiliar voice boomed once more over the speakers: "Wyvern. Kill Tony Stark."

They froze.

"Pep," Tony breathed, his mind reeling, "get… get to the safe room, you've gotta…" he couldn't  _think_ , his ears were ringing with the words he'd just heard. When he woke up to unfamiliar French words being broadcast through speakers across the facility, Tony had known right away what they were. And then the voice had called on the  _Wyvern._

" _Tony_ ," Pepper gasped, but she wasn't looking at him. He followed her gaze over his shoulder to their bedroom window overlooking the facility lawns. Lawns which now had three teams of agents in tactical suits swarming across them.

Tony's stomach plummeted. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.?" he called, as if he hadn't been shouting for her since he woke up to an unfamiliar voice on the facility speakers. The sensation of silence when he called for her was sickening, reminding him of that awful night J.A.R.V.I.S. went silent, but he didn't  _care_ because Maggie was out there somewhere with those  _words_ –

"Tony," snapped Pepper. She sounded like a drill sergeant, and when he turned to stare hopelessly at her she looked like she had when she killed Killian, all burning rage and determination. "I'm going to get Rhodey and get the facility agents mobilized, and evacuate any civilians to the safe rooms. You get in the suit."

She squeezed his bicep and turned to leave, but Tony felt like his feet were frozen to the floor. "Pep–" she turned back. "Pepper, Maggie's… she's…"

Pepper's flaming anger faded just for a moment. "I know," she whispered. But then her shoulders straightened, and her chin came up. "Get in the suit."

 

* * *

 

The Wyvern strode down a gleaming white corridor with her hands loose by her sides and her eyes focused. The Adamantium plating in her bare heels made soft  _clinks_ with every step.

She wore soft tracksuit pants and a shirt with some kind of graphic design on it – not optimal for combat, but she only had one target. She had her heel spurs, and a knife she'd found in a kitchenette. More than sufficient for her mission.

She turned and entered an open foyer space, taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to the early morning light arcing through the glass windows. As she paced in search of her target her eyes caught on evidence of evacuation: abandoned briefcases and jackets on chairs, an overturned coffee cup. She turned, intending to head for the target's workshop, when–

"Ms Stark? What's going on? F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s not answering and I can't find any…"

The Wyvern turned, and when the speaker (civilian boy, backpack, unarmed and untrained) saw her face, he trailed off.

"Ms Stark?" his voice was suddenly octaves higher, and his eyes widened. She watched his gaze flick down to the kitchen knife in her hand.

The Wyvern eyed him for a few long moments, assessing, then bit out: "Where is Tony Stark."

The boy's eyes went even rounder. "Whoah, okay… um, Ms… uh, Maggie," the Wyvern flinched, and the boy's hands shot up in a defensive gesture, "why do you… why do you want to find Mr Stark?"

The Wyvern cocked her head, considering what to do with the boy. Her handler had not given her any mission parameters beyond  _kill Tony Stark,_ no orders about stealth or secrecy or what to do about witnesses. Her programming ensured that with such an order she would achieve the mission at all costs.

As she considered the boy there was an explosion on the other side of the facility, followed by the percussive sound of heavy artillery. It rattled the windows.

The boy flinched, but then turned back to the Wyvern. "M-Maggie, I don't know what's happening but you've gotta snap out of it, okay–"

She took a step forward, and the boy sank into an unmistakable fighting stance.

The Wyvern's eyes narrowed.  _Combatant._

She flung her knife at him, anticipating the blade to slice cleanly into his chest and take him out of the equation, but to her surprise he flipped out of the knife's trajectory, shot webbing from his wrists and launched himself toward the ceiling where he stuck like a spider. Her knife quivered in the opposite wall.

The boy started scuttling along the ceiling. "Okay, Ms Stark, why don't we just–  _agh_!" He dodged the coffee mug she hurled at him and was sufficiently distracted to allow her to slip into the next corridor. She got her bearings and headed for Tony Stark's workshop. The boy wasn't her mission.

But it seemed she had become his mission. He swung into the narrower space after her and then reeled back from a punch to the nose. The Wyvern followed up with a sweep from her heel spur but the boy rolled under the Adamantium spike and kicked her in the knee, compromising her balance.

"C'mon, Ms Stark, it's me Peter!" He ducked behind her and shoved her. "We met at the airport, remember? You're  _Ms Stark_ , you can snap out of it! Please–" The Wyvern kneed him in the stomach and seized his arm to twist him into a pinning hold – but the boy managed to wriggle free and shot more webbing to get out of range. The Wyvern turned and stalked down the corridor, senses alert to the boy's movements behind her.

"Ms Stark, just  _stop_!" the boy's voice was high and thready. She kept walking. He shot a web projectile at her and she sidestepped it easily, not even looking back.

The Wyvern kicked down the door at the end of the corridor, revealing another open space that wasn't quite as empty as the last one. It was a long, high-ceilinged room filled with sleek desks and potted plants, and at the far end a group of wide-eyed civilians were filing into a fire exit. At the back of the group a tall woman in pajamas with strawberry-blonde hair looked over her shoulder, went white, then shouted at the civilians to  _move it!_

Another round of gunfire rattled the windows, followed by the distant  _boom_ of a grenade launcher, and the Wyvern eyed the large glass windows on the far wall. There was a battle underway on the facility lawns: agents in black tactical gear versus an assembly of what looked like off-duty soldiers or agents, trading gunfire across the manicured green grass.

 _Ground support,_ thought the Wyvern. _Optimal for distraction._

The Wyvern took one step towards the frightened civilians, then gritted her teeth at the sound of the boy leaping after her. He swung over her head and placed himself between her and the civilians, his hands raised. His breath came short and sharp as he stared at her. "You don't wanna do this, Ms Stark."

A brief flicker of  _something_ unfurled in the Wyvern's mind, but she dismissed it.  _Malfunction._ Her muscles coiled. She was about to strike when a new sound reverberated through the room: a high, mechanical whine that had her turning to the tall glass windows with narrowed eyes.

Two flying metal suits lowered into view. A bulky black and silver armor with heavy artillery packed across it, and a red and gold armor with glowing white eyes. The Wyvern's gut clenched as mission-relevant information came to the forefront of her mind:  _Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man. Red and gold armor, heavily armed and dangerous._

_Target acquired._

But Iron Man and the other one ( _War Machine_ , her combatant knowledge supplied) were beyond the glass, and she was currently faced with an  _obstruction._ The boy had glanced over his shoulder at the new arrivals, but now his eyes were trained on the Wyvern.

At that moment the tall woman, now alone at the other end of the room, cried "Peter be careful, she's–"

The boy looked over his shoulder again and the Wyvern struck. She darted towards him and clipped him across his jaw, disorienting him, then seized two handfuls of his shirt, planted her feet and  _heaved._ The boy sailed through the air, crashed through the nearby wall in an explosion of glass, and then went through the next wall as well.

The tall woman let out a sob, but when the Wyvern around her eyes widened and she backed away into the fire escape.

And then the wide glass windows shattered.

The Wyvern hissed at the screeching blast and sudden shower of glass, but lowered her center of gravity and locked her eyes on her target. Iron Man now hovered just below the high ceilings of the office space, their arms up and weapons primed as they looked down at her.

"Maggie," came Tony Stark's voice, amplified by his armor. His voice shook. And if he fired his repulsor right now, he'd miss her by at least two feet.

 _Emotion. Weakness._ The Wyvern didn't move a muscle, but her mind latched onto the observation.  _Advantage._

In the next instant she burst into action – she took two strides toward the nearest desk, leapt onto it and sprang up, her arms reaching for Iron Man's dangling legs. But War Machine intercepted her, seizing her around the middle and diving back to the floor.

"C'mon, Maggie, snap out of it," War Machine said grimly. The Wyvern grunted in his grip and noted that Iron Man had flown further into the room (checking on the boy, she realized) then twisted and  _pushed,_ freeing herself from War Machine's arms. They came to a skidding landing on the ground, both of them on their feet.

The Wyvern didn't let him recover. She punched the armor's helmet, her enhanced strength knocking him back a step, then followed up with a knee to the gut and a flurry of blows across his face and neck. War Machine lifted a whining repulsor and she seized it, turning it away from her face and  _squeezing_ until the glowing white light splintered in her hand. War Machine cried out in surprise, which turned into a grunt when the Wyvern grabbed a nearby desk chair and broke it across his face.

She turned, fists clenched and eyes sharp, to see Iron Man standing a few paces away. He didn't move, didn't make any motion to attack her or defend his friend. She felt him looking at her.

His helmet slid up to bare his face. Dark, haunted eyes looked back at her, and the Wyvern read emotion all over his face.

"Maggie," he whispered, almost choking on the word. The Wyvern felt nothing. "Peter's okay, you haven't hurt anyone. Just  _please_ –"

She waited until he was halfway into his next sentence before she snatched a pair of scissors from the closest desk and flung them point-first at Tony Stark's exposed face. She caught a glimpse of wide eyes before the helmet flicked up just in time. The scissors clattered off the gold face plate and fell to the floor.

She came at him heel-spurs first. He managed to dodge, but for some reason didn't take the opportunity to fight back. The Wyvern noted the aberration, and the close quarters that gave her the advantage over the clunky armor. She punched his helmet, his arc reactor, and kicked his feet out from under him. The armor crashed to the floor and she plunged her heel spur down–

Only to find herself being knocked back onto a desk with white-spots in her eyes and her shirt singed, ears ringing with the sound of Iron Man's repulsors. She coughed for breath.

"I don't want to hurt you Maggie," said Iron Man from somewhere to her left, and she rolled off the desk and swung wildly. Her knuckles collided with armor, and she felt the metal crumple under her hand. She spun and kicked out with her heel spur, only to be knocked sideways again. This time it was War Machine, who wrapped his arms around her and propelled them both through the smashed window and onto the lawns outside.

" _Maggie_ ," he shouted in her ear, "You're stronger than this, c'mon! You don't want to hurt Tony!"

The Wyvern felt another flicker of… something, but then  _the mission_ surged from her gut and up her throat, strangling her and returning her focus to the mission. They were somewhere in the air, the War Machine clearly trying to keep her away from her target, so the Wyvern drove her elbow into the parts of his armor she could reach – face, shoulder joint, then with some twisting, the arc reactor. She elbowed it once, twice, and on the third time heard something shatter. War Machine swore in her ear and tried to readjust, but she used his weakening hold on her to break free.

She'd misjudged the distance. War Machine had been steadily climbing, so she was suddenly faced with a hundred-foot drop and no wings. The wind screamed in her ears and tore at her hair and skin, and fear prickled in the Wyvern's gut.

Luckily for the Wyvern, and unluckily for Iron Man, he arrived to catch her. As soon as he plucked her out of the air the Wyvern threw her fist into his face with a metallic  _clang_. Iron Man swore. "Dick move, Maggie!"

The Wyvern ignored him, and went right to trying to crack through his armor and strike at the vulnerable flesh within. Even as he tried to hold her up she threw her fists into his armor and tried to get an angle on him with her heel spurs.

"Maggie,  _wake up_!" he grunted, trying to fly and avoid her at the same time. When she dug her fingers into part of his chest plate and  _pulled_ , Stark cursed and dove out of the sky, turning just in time to take the full brunt of the impact with the ground. The impact knocked the breath from the Wyvern's lungs but she didn't stop attacking, even as she suddenly found herself in the midst of the battle between the Avengers forces and the black clad agents. Gunfire and shouts filled the air, and blast marks blackened the lawns.

_Kill Tony Stark._

The Wyvern felt suddenly sick; a deep-seated nausea roiled in her gut and cold sweat broke out on her forehead, but her programming did not allow her to falter. She powered on, deadly and ruthless. Iron Man had managed to trap her arms against her sides as she gasped for air so she headbutted him, splitting the skin in her left eyebrow and cracking the glass of his right eye slit.

" _Maggot_ ," he cried desperately, and bile rose in the Wyvern's throat even as she tried to buck him off, pitting her strength against his powered metal. She twisted, angled her right foot against one of his armored legs, and extended her heel spur. She felt the spur slice through metal and into flesh. Stark cried out but didn't let her go. A grenade whistled over their heads.

"Maggie,  _c'mon_!" he shouted. The Wyvern growled and pulled her heel spur free, making him grunt in pain, then got an arm free and began to rip her way out of his grip. A nearby black-clad agent shot a spray of bullets at Iron Man that bounced off the armor and into the grass. One whistled past the Wyvern's cheek.

"Dammit," came Stark's voice. He let her go, and the Wyvern drew her knees back to plunge both heel spurs straight through his arc reactor and into his chest, but then there was a glowing white gauntlet in her face, a hiss, a faint shimmer to the air–

And everything slipped away.

 

* * *

 

She woke up in her room.

Maggie's mind dredged itself out of unconsciousness, and she opened her eyes to see her bedroom ceiling. Her body felt like it was full of lead.

She blinked, and then horrible memories and images filtered into her mind. A glinting knife that left her hand and plunged through the air towards a wide-eyed Peter. Pepper staring at her with bone-white fear on her face. Tony pleading and begging, his metal armor crumpling beneath her fists.

 _A nightmare._ Surely that's what it was, and now she'd woken up for real, safe in her room.

But she knew what nightmares felt like.

Maggie's lips parted and she took in a shuddering breath, more of a sob. That breath turned into two, then three, and all of a sudden she was hyperventilating as she stared at the ceiling, each breath of air slicing into her throat like a blade made of ice and she wasn't getting enough oxygen, she couldn't  _breathe_ –

"Your name is Margaret Stark," came F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s soothing voice and Maggie yelped at the sound of it, "You are safe, you are in your bedroom at the Avengers Facility, in upstate New York. I am F.R.I.D.A.Y, Tony' Stark's A.I–"

"I know," Maggie gasped through ragged breaths, still immobile on her back, "F.R.I.D.A.Y., it's…  _Tony_ , what, is he–"

Luckily the A.I. parsed her panicked garbling. "The boss is safe, Ms Stark, you didn't hurt him–"

"No I  _did_ , I… oh god–" metal crumpling, glass cracking, her heel spur sliding through armor plating and cutting into flesh– Maggie tried to get out of bed, but she only managed to roll on her side before she was throwing up, retching water and stomach acid onto the ground beside her bed.

 _My words._ She heaved again, her throat and eyes burning.  _They're not just in my head any more._

"Your brother is fine," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, somehow gentle. "He has a wound in his left calf and minor bruising, but other than that you did not harm him. Mr Parker sustained a sprained wrist and bruising" – Maggie gagged again – "and asked me to tell you as soon as possible that he does not blame you and that he also, quote, 'hopes you feel better soon'."

Maggie dropped her forehead against her mattress and shuddered.

"Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes are both fine. All civilians were evacuated, even without my help, and the Avengers ground forces killed or captured each member of the invading force with no casualties suffered to our side. The situation is under control, Ms Stark – you and the people you care about are safe. You have been asleep for three hours and forty one minutes."

Maggie blinked and realized that her wrist with the Manacle on it was in front of her face. The Manacle's light blinked green again.

"What happened to you?" she whispered hoarsely.

"It appears the attackers planned this for some time – they've been working with a mole in the Avengers Facility security analysis department, who gave them enough information about my code makeup to take me out for approximately twenty minutes. This also took down the Doomsday Protocol, the Manacle, and facility-wide security." F.R.I.D.A.Y. paused. "I must apologize, Ms Stark."

"No," Maggie whispered. "No, you don't have to." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Tony?"

"The boss left the facility three and a half hours ago with Colonel Rhodes and Vision, who returned from South America at the end of the battle. They left to chase down the group who attacked the facility." Maggie's eyes opened, and she stared out the window. The forest looked untouched, stark black branches moving slightly in a gust of wind.

Her body ached from abuse and from exhaustion. Whatever Tony had hit her with must be potent stuff. She could feel bruises on her knuckles, radiating pain up her arms, and cuts and bruises across her body. Her left eyebrow was stiff with dried blood from headbutting Tony's helmet, and she could feel what was sure to be a very colorful bruise on her forehead, no doubt from when she'd run full tilt at her window in an attempt to knock herself out.

"Ms Stark, I've assessed that you are in possession of your faculties and are no longer a danger," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said out of nowhere. "I was instructed to allow Ms Potts into the room as soon as you were deemed safe."

"No," she mumbled, still boneless and half-hanging off the side of her bed. "She's not… I'm not… I'm not safe."

"Do you intend to hurt Ms Potts?"

_Terror etched across her face as she backed into a fire escape._

"No," Maggie whispered.

"Then I am afraid she won't take no for an answer."

At that, the door slid open. The sound of Pepper's clicking heels entered the room and Maggie hunched in her bed.

" _Maggie_ ," Pepper breathed, and rushed toward her. The bed shifted as Pepper sat on the edge, then Maggie felt a ghost of warmth over her arm; no doubt Pepper's hand hovering over her. "Maggie, are you okay? Are you hurt? F.R.I.D.A.Y. said you'd gotten some injuries but we didn't think it was safe to try and treat them until we were sure you were back to yourself–"

"I'm so sorry," Maggie whispered, and then choked because she was suddenly crying, tears streaming down her face and clogging her nose, and shuddering sobs wracking her body. She tried to hunch into a ball but Pepper was there, her slender arms warm and gentle as she pulled Maggie into herself and made hushing, soothing sounds.

"It's okay," Pepper said as Maggie sobbed into her shoulder, "It's not your fault, it's okay. It's not your fault."

Maggie's arms slipped around Pepper's middle and she clutched at the other woman's body, desperately seeking warmth even though it didn't feel like something she deserved. Pepper smoothed her hand over the back of Maggie's head, supporting her and petting her hair. She rocked from side to side as if Maggie was a baby who might go to sleep at the soothing movement.

Maggie was used to crying silently and alone in her bed in the wake of a nightmare, or in the courthouse bathroom after a long day of testimony. But she couldn't make herself be quiet now – her horror and grief burst out of her in sobs and gasps, senseless noises that ripped from her heart and through her throat that she couldn't stop if she tried. Pepper accepted it all with soft hands and a softer voice, though when she shifted Maggie felt tears dripping into her hair.

When Maggie began to quiet down, out of exhaustion more than anything else, Pepper leaned back just far enough to take Maggie's face in her hands. Her fingers were gentle against Maggie's tear-stained skin.

"Maggie, look at me."

She did. Pepper's eyes were red and watery, but hard with determination. Maggie noticed herself shivering.

"This was  _not_ your fault," Pepper said in a tone of complete and utter certainty. "You did not want this. I know you, I know you'd have done everything you could to prevent this. Our home was  _attacked._ Not by you, but by people who wanted to hurt us. And the person they hurt the worst of all was you." She held Maggie's gaze, and Maggie could swear she saw fire flickering behind her eyes. Pepper must have approved of what she saw in Maggie's face because she nodded. "So Maggie, you don't have to be sorry about a single thing.  _I_ am sorry that this happened to you."

Maggie felt her heart do a weird wobble-glow-melt thing, and she thought she might start crying again, but she just didn't have the energy. She licked her lips and grimaced at the taste of salt. "Tony?" she croaked.

Pepper stroked a thumb across Maggie's cheek, collecting leftover tears. "He's fine." But then her eyes flickered. "Well, he's angry – not at you!" she clarified, hands tightening on Maggie's face for just a moment. "He's angry at the people who did this. As soon as you were safe he took off after them – I don't know a lot about it, but the people who came today were part of a larger group with a base somewhere else." Her eyes hardened again. "Tony and the others should be at the base by now."

Maggie swallowed. She remembered the way she'd felt when Ross threatened Tony, and then how that feeling had amplified a hundredfold the day a stranger turned a gun towards her brother. It was a gut-twisting mix of rage, fear, nausea, protectiveness and  _vengeance._ She wondered if that concoction was burning through Tony's veins right now. Her heart ached.

Pepper's eyes flicked over Maggie's face. "Medical bay," she said abruptly, as if deciding on what to have for dinner. "C'mon."

A shiver ran over Maggie and she looked over her shoulder. "I threw up."

Pepper rubbed her back. They sat together in the middle of the bed, Maggie still half-slumped against Pepper. "I know," Pepper murmured. "We'll get a cleaner in while we're at the med bay. Can you stand?"

"I dunno." Maggie tried anyway, crawling to the non-vomit side of the bed and then standing on shaky legs. She winced, and leaned down to pull a sliver of glass out of her heel. Pepper went a bit pale, but then slung Maggie's arm over her shoulder and helped her stagger out of the room.

 

* * *

 

 

The medical bay looked as if it had been busy very recently, but had quietened down. A team of cleaners made their way through the area collecting snippets of bloody clothes and used medical supplies.

Maggie assumed that most of those who'd been injured in the attack had already been treated and left the med bay, but some of the beds were occupied – all by Avengers agents she recognized, banged up and bruised but surprisingly cheerful. They turned to look at her, and she shied away.

But Pepper held her firm. "Not many people saw you when you were… different," she murmured, dragging Maggie further into the gleaming space.

"But they heard my words," she whispered, as something clawed at her throat. "They know what I was told to do."

"Okay, sure. But they  _understand_ , Maggie. Look: no one blames you."

Maggie glanced up from under her lashes, and realized that none of the looks she was getting were judgmental. Most people eyed her and her bloody forehead, then looked away. Maggie's eyes darted around the room and a rush of  _something_ went through her. These people knew her words, knew what she'd set out to do only  _hours_ ago, and they were accepting her into this room as if she wasn't a threat. She swallowed thickly.

A female agent Maggie had met a few times in the gym met her eyes and delivered a sloppy salute. She lay in a hospital bed with a tub of jello in one hand.

"Alright, Stark?" asked the agent, her voice light but her eyes heavy. Maggie could see in her eyes that she'd seen the Wyvern.

Maggie swallowed. "Um." She wasn't sure how to answer the question, so she deflected. "You?"

The agent tugged down the white hospital sheets to reveal a bandage wrapped around her waist. "Shrapnel," she explained. "I'll be fine though, just waiting my turn for the Cradle. Take care, you hear?"

Maggie gave her a watery smile, then let Pepper pull her towards the triage area. She sat still on a hospital bed and let Dr Cho and a couple of nurses fuss over her; extracting glass from her skin, cleaning up the split in her eyebrow and her bruised forehead, and checking her symptoms after experiencing Tony's experimental knockout gas. She realized partway through that she was still wearing the clothes she'd slept and fought in: a pair of sweatpants and a shirt that had a cartoon tea-bag with the words 'tea shirt' on it. Her clothes were torn and bloody, streaked with mud from the facility lawns.

Pepper stood a few feet away, biting her lip but shooting Maggie an  _everything-is-fine_ face whenever she looked up.

Just as they were finishing up, Maggie heard an awkward scuffle of shoes and an  _ah-hem_ as someone cleared their throat. She looked up, and the blood drained from her face.

" _Peter_."

He stood just inside the curtain around her hospital bed, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and his eyes hopeful as he looked at her. There was a split across the bridge of his nose held together by butterfly bandages, a shadow of a bruise along his jaw, and as her eyes tracked down to his ripped sweater she spotted a bandage immobilizing one of his wrists. All at once, Maggie felt close to throwing up again.

"Hey Ms Stark," he said cheerfully, and she felt his eyes track from the wounds on her face, to her bloody clothing, and back up to her eyes. "How're you doing? Or... that might be a stupid question." He winced.

She swallowed. "Peter, I…" she gaped, unable to find the words. "I'm  _so sorry_."

He shook his head. "No I get it, the A.I. lady explained it to me – you've got that trigger word thing, right? So it wasn't you." He said it so matter-of-factly, as if she hadn't thrown a kitchen knife at him, tried to kill his mentor, and thrown him through not one but  _two_ walls. He shifted his weight and pulled his hands out of his pockets to fidget with his bandaged wrist. Maggie's heart lurched. She couldn't do anything but stare at him.

"I, uh…" he gestured awkwardly at her. "I got out of that pinning hold, like you taught me."

Maggie burst into tears again.

 

Peter reacted about as well as any teenage boy did when someone started crying, but luckily Pepper was there to swoop back in and rub Maggie's back and soothe her through the tears. When she'd hiccuped herself quiet and Peter looked less like a deer in headlights, they spoke for a few more minutes. Peter seemed to want to reassure himself that she was alright now, and Maggie interrogated him in return about his wounds, asking if they hurt and if his aunt knew he was okay. Peter seemed… remarkably calm about it all. He'd seemed more stressed when he met Maggie for the first time than he did now.

After a brief chat Peter got a call from his aunt, who had been watching the news and decided that what they were talking about was  _significantly worse_ than however he'd described the morning's attack, and he left with an apologetic wave.

Maggie waited until he'd left the room before she sagged in on herself, her shoulders bowing and her head drooping until her forehead nearly touched her knees. Pepper let out a soft breath.

"What do you want to do?" she asked, her hand resting beside Maggie's on the hospital bed.

Maggie sighed. "I don't know."

"Maybe you should try to get some sleep, you've–"

"No," she interrupted. "I don't want to sleep."

"Now where have I heard that before," Pepper murmured fondly. "Alright. Let's go watch some movies."

Maggie let Pepper take her by the hand and lead her out of the med bay, her mind filled with ringing numbness.

 

* * *

 

Tony and the others returned that night.

When F.R.I.D.A.Y. paused Maggie and Pepper's movie to alert them of the incoming Quinjet Maggie sprang to her feet and ran to her room, barely hearing Pepper's "Maggie, wait–".

Once the vacuum-sealed door slid shut behind her, she let out a breath and slid to the floor.

"Ms Stark?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. The A.I. managed to pack a lot of questions into just two words.

Maggie knocked her head back against the door. "What if I try to kill him again," she replied breathlessly.

"You've shown no signs of regression this morning, and if you're concerned we can run a controlled meeting–" F.R.I.D.A.Y. began, but Maggie interrupted:

"It's not even that. I'm terrified to see him because he saw me as  _the Wyvern,_ F.R.I.D.A.Y., that's never happened and what if… what if he…"

F.R.I.D.A.Y. fell silent. But she didn't leave Maggie to wallow in her thoughts for long, because a few minutes later the door slid open again and Maggie, who had been leaning against it, toppled backwards.

 

* * *

 

Tony, fresh out of the armor and having just left a brief, breathless conversation with Pepper, ran down the corridor to Maggie's room.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y., open the door!"

"Boss, she's–"

"I appreciate your respect for Maggie's choices, but in this instance you can forget about it. Now open the door!"

As he reached the room the door slid open, and Maggie fell out.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y. what the  _hell_ –" she shouted as she fell, but then Tony ducked down and caught her, throwing his arms around her and pulling her in for a too-tight and too-desperate hug. At first she stiffened, but on realizing just who had near-smothered her, her breath caught in her chest.

"Hey, Maggot," Tony mumbled, not quite sure what to say or what to check on first, and a millisecond later Maggie's long arms wrapped around his chest and squeezed tight. She buried her face in his shoulder, and he just knew that she was listening to his heartbeat.

Pepper had said  _she's in a really bad place, Tony._ He'd been expecting sobs, maybe, but Maggie didn't do that – he didn't even realize she was crying until he noticed that the part of his shirt she'd buried her face in had gone damp. His arms tightened around her and something in his chest shuddered. They didn't say anything, just held each other. Tony wondered how many times he would have to hold his sister as her world fell apart. He wondered why he was so incapable of protecting the people he loved.

He thought he'd understood the trigger words, or at least the seriousness of the threat they posed. But when he'd flown into that room and seen Maggie standing there, poised to attack with her fists balled and her eyes sharp and calculating, something inside him had shattered and fallen away. He'd suddenly understood all the times Maggie had said  _I'm a person now,_ because what he'd seen in that room wasn't a person. It was a machine, a  _weapon_ , primed for nothing but violence and death. The Wyvern looked exactly like Maggie and yet at the same time was utterly different: she held herself in a different way, looked at the world with different eyes; eyes that didn't see hope or humor or love, only angles and targets. Tony had looked at her and realized that the Wyvern would not hesitate to kill him. That realization was closely followed by a second: he might not be able to stop her.

He'd always known that Maggie was dangerous - he'd seen videos of her in action, seen her at the airport in Leipzig, heard hours of testimony about her lethal efficiency. And yet going up against her when she absolutely, one-hundred-percent wanted to kill him was another story. He could see why she'd been HYDRA's prized weapon. His and Rhodey's suits bore the evidence - she'd almost gotten to both of them.

And while all these thoughts had circled and raged through his brain, they crystallized around a single truth: she was Maggie, she was his sister, and he couldn't hurt her.

Maggie's breath hitched again, as if she could read his thoughts.

"It's not your fault," he murmured, head tucked beside hers. "It's not your fault." He was awkwardly hunched over her - she'd half-fallen out of her room and he'd caught her on his way in, so she was mostly propped against his chest as he knelt on the hard floor. Maggie's fingers dug into his shirt and he felt her try to control her breathing.

For his part, Tony squeezed his eyes shut, allowed himself to feel relieved that Maggie was here and herself (and that seeing her as the Wyvern had not changed the way he thought about her), and tried to ignore the sick feeling in his gut like everything was falling apart.

After a few more minutes he muttered: "I gotta sit down or something, my knees are killing me."

That combined with the grunt he let out as he rolled sideways startled a laugh out of Maggie, and she pulled back just far enough to look him in the face. He wasn't sure what she saw – he was grimacing at the ache in his knees (and in his calf where she'd managed to stick him with a heel spur), and he no doubt looked exhausted and concerned – but at the sight of his face something in her eyes loosened, and her body relaxed a little.

Tony looked her over. "Are you alright?" She looked as exhausted as he felt, bags under her eyes and shoulders slumped. His eyes tracked to the butterfly bandages across her eyebrow and the purple-black-blue bruise just below her hairline. "You're hurt, how are you feeling? Dr Cho said–"

Maggie gaped at him. "What about  _you_?" She leaned back even further to give him a once-over and her attention darted down to the bandage wrapped around his left leg. Her face shuttered and closed off, but not before he saw a flash of horror.

"Don't worry about it," he said, waving her off. He eyed her face, then got distracted by the bandages around her bare feet. He suddenly remembered that she'd done all that fighting without any kind of protection–

Her voice cut off his train of thought. "Tony, I'm so–"

"If you say sorry right now I'm going to throw you out a window." He looked up and winced. "Again." Well that had technically been Rhodey, but Tony had been about to do it.

Maggie's mouth shut. She didn't seem to know quite what to say to that, so she leaned back against the door jamb and looked at him. He looked back at her, running a hand across his sweaty forehead.

"Did you just get back?" she asked, her voice making it clear that she wasn't sure where he was coming back  _from._

But Tony was still caught up on what she'd almost said to him. "I'm the one who should be sorry," he replied, making her blink. "I already lost one A.I. but I didn't think… I made F.R.I.D.A.Y. better but I didn't think about fall backs if anything went wrong, I haven't learned from a mistake I made  _ten goddamn years ago_." He shifted where he sat, agitated, and glared down at his knee. "I promised you there would be checks in place if your words were ever spoken, but they all relied on F.R.I.D.A.Y., and just by taking her out for 20 minutes those assholes wiped away…  _everything._ " He hung his head. "It was stupid.  _I_ was stupid. And I'm sorry, Maggie."

Maggie kicked him. Not hard, more of a nudge from her toe against his shin, but it got him to look up at her.

"If – if you say sorry I'm going to throw you out a window," she whispered hoarsely. She bit her lip, clearly not sure how the attempt at a joke would fly, but he cracked a smile at her and something in him settled when he saw the corners of her lips turn up. This was a Maggie he rarely saw these days - unsure of herself, hesitant, seeming almost surprised to find that she could do something so human as to make a joke or to smile. He wondered if this was what she'd been like those first weeks and months after breaking away from HYDRA. The thought made his heart ache.

Maggie swallowed and continued: "I… I tried to kill you this morning. And you feel shitty about it, apparently, which is weird because  _I_ feel shitty about it." She sniffed and wiped her tears away. "But I've, um, been doing some thinking throughout the day. And it seems like it… wasn't either of our faults." Relief hit Tony like a truck - relief that she wasn't going to blame herself for this, and a guilty relief that she didn't blame him for not protecting her. Maggie saw the relief in his eyes and her shoulders straightened. "So tell me whose fault it really is."

He met her gaze, met her anger. After a beat of silence he got to his feet and held out his hand. "Come with me."

She took a deep breath, and put her hand in his.


	68. Chapter 68

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here there be swears.
> 
> There's a portion of this chapter where a Spanish-speaking individual speaks for quite a long time, with a translator. I'm going to just write the English version, but please remember that it's in Spanish first. (Also, this person's name used to be Michael in this fic, but I changed it to Miguel, so if you're confused that's why!).
> 
> Also, happy new year!
> 
> edit: tweets

 

Maggie had never been to the Avengers operations room before. It was where the Avengers and their support staff prepared intel, planned missions, and where base staff communicated with the Avengers while they were being heroes out in the world.

Maggie eyed the door to the operations room, her hand still in Tony's. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yep," he replied, and then opened the door and led her inside.

The operations room reminded her a little of Tony's workshop because it was full of machines – computers, scanning devices, holographic screens. She'd sort of been expecting a dark room with nothing but glowing computer screens to cut through the gloom, but this room was just as light and space-age looking as the rest of the facility (though she had no doubt that the glass windows were missile-proof and impossible to see through from the outside). The setup kind of reminded her of pictures of NASA mission control rooms (she'd seen plenty of those, thanks to Bucky's obsession with space travel).

Unlike Tony's workshop, the operations room was  _packed._ Avengers agents and analysts conversed over data-filled screens, slid through the press of people with their arms full of folders and tablets, and pored over files. Some of them were injured, but they all seemed 100% focused. A few looked up when Tony and Maggie walked in, then went back to work without a second glance.

But Maggie couldn't bring herself to focus for long on the busy people in the room. Her gaze instantly focused on two people in the center of the chaos.

Rhodey and Vision looked up as she entered, and for a few moments all any of them could do was just  _look_ at each other. Rhodey looked as if he'd just gotten out of the armor, still in the carefully-designed underarmor outfit and hastily strapped into his exosuit. Vision still wore his battle-gear, blue suit and gold cape and all. Their faces creased in near-identical expressions of concern when they saw her.

Tony extracted his hand from her sudden death-grip and gave her shoulder a shove. She stumbled, then found herself pushing through the harried agents and analysts, through to the center of the room where she threw herself into Vision and Rhodey's arms. They reeled her in and held her tight, and Maggie gripped them probably harder than was comfortable, but just enough to reassure herself that they were here, and safe.

"Are you okay?" she mumbled into Rhodey's shoulder as Vision patted her back awkwardly.

Rhodey huffed. "Please, you scratched the paintjob on my armor. I'm fine." He pulled back and scanned her face. "You doing alright?"

She took in a deep breath. "I'm scared. And angry. And really, really sorry."

"You have no reason to be sorry," Vision interjected, his hand warm as ever on her shoulder. "I am sorry I wasn't here to–"

" _Agh_ ," Tony interrupted, and they all glanced over at him. "Maggie's sorry, you're sorry, we're all sorry – but you put it best just now, Marinara, who should  _really_ be sorry?" He made an expansive gesture which brought up an enormous holographic screen, and then crossed his arms over his chest and gave them all a pointed look. "Let's give her the briefing."

Maggie cocked an eyebrow at Vision and Rhodey then extricated herself and went to stand by Tony's side. A few nearby analysts had stilled and were eyeing the Avengers and Maggie standing in the middle of the room.

Rhodey put his hands on his hips and nodded. "Alright. Vision you've been working the most on this, you wanna take it?"

"Certainly." Vision didn't need to make hand gestures to manipulate the holographic screen – in an instant the screensaver (the annoying one with the bouncing bubbles) cleared away to reveal a slowly-revolving logo in grey and yellow:

_A. I. M._

Maggie's hands balled into fists. " _A.I.M._ did this?" she turned on Tony. "I thought they were gone?"

He clenched his jaw and gestured for Vision to continue.

"A.I.M. did fall apart after the Extremis terrorist plots and the death of CEO Aldrich Killian," Vision said, and the screen shifted to a picture of Killian's face; strong-jawed and blonde. Tony huffed. "But over recent months we became aware of a new scientific group growing in influence in the shadows." Killian's face was replaced by dozens of headlines including  _Cyber-Attack on Stark Industries Fails_ ;  _Theft at medical technology company leaves authorities baffled;_ and  _Bodies of seven missing men and women found in trash compactor: M.E. finds signs of experimentation._

Maggie's gut churned. "And this is A.I.M.?"

"The fragments of it," Vision explained and gestured to the screen which now showed hundreds of employee profiles: scientists mostly, their faces crowding the screen. "Everyone at A.I.M. who was involved with Extremis is dead or in prison, but these scientists worked in other areas of the company. When A.I.M. collapsed they were left without jobs and without prospects, and they banded together with remaining A.I.M. soldiers. This was 2013. It is unlikely that the remaining fragments of A.I.M. would have survived had it not been for…" Vision hesitated, then at a nod from Tony changed the screen once more. Maggie flinched back as a black tentacled skull filled her vision.

She swallowed. "HYDRA funded them."

"Funded them, gave them resources and arms and soldiers," Rhodey added, his hands on his hips and his face grim. "A.I.M. provided them weapons in return. When HYDRA fell they hid in the shadows, and now they're some kind of A.I.M./HYDRA mix. We didn't even know they were back until this year, when they started turning their focus on Stark Industries."

"Turns out they're… not super happy with me," Tony continued. "Apparently they're mad at me for shutting down their company and their jobs, and for murdering their boss – which totally isn't fair because that was  _Pepper_ –"

"Tony," Maggie breathed. "They're the ones who tried to have you killed, aren't they? They hired that guy?"

He grimaced. "Uh, yeah. We knew there was a hit out on me, so it wasn't really a big surprise–"

She bristled. "You  _knew_ –"

"Let's not get off track," Vision interrupted smoothly. "Yes, we have been aware of A.I.M.'s activities lately, including their desire for revenge against Mr Stark. What we were  _not_ aware of was just how insidious their reach was. They managed to lure me to South America to get me out of the way, then executed months worth of planning to disable F.R.I.D.A.Y. and attack the compound. The staff member who colluded with them has already been arrested and charged, and today we struck a blow in retaliation – we captured a great portion of A.I.M.'s leadership and scientific staff."

"But they're still out there," Maggie inferred. Something was twisting, flickering in her chest – but it wasn't the cold calculation of the Wyvern. It was  _rage._

"Yeah," Rhodey sighed. "We finally worked out where their main base was, but some of them still managed to escape. Including their leader, Alan Crowe. We think they've got a secondary base somewhere." He ran a hand over his buzz cut. "I'm sorry, Maggie."

She shook her head once. "You heard Tony, don't be sorry." Her gaze was fixed on the screen, which now showed the Avengers files on the current A.I.M. members. Many of the images were crossed off, with  _captured_ or  _killed_ written beside them, but she could see that at least a fifth of them remained. The one at the top was a man called  _Alan Crowe._ The image beside his name was an A.I.M. personnel ID picture of a dark-haired man in his mid-thirties with pale blue eyes, almost white.

Maggie's fingernails bit into her palm and she tore her gaze away from the A.I.M. members to look at the Avengers. Tony was grim-faced, his arms crossed over his chest as he glowered at the hologram. Vision looked calmer but he kept shooting glances at her. Rhodey looked exhausted.

She took a long breath through her nose. "And… they have my words?" the words were soft, but they may as well have been shouted with how they made the Avengers' faces darken.

Tony answered her. "Yes," he said. "You said you didn't know if there was anyone left alive who knew your words, but… do you recognize this guy?" he flicked a finger, and the photos of the A.I.M. leaders were replaced by a still from an interrogation room security camera. Maggie recognized Rhodey's profile, standing over the sleek metal table, but her eyes caught on the man handcuffed to the table: he was a rough-looking man, probably in his mid-sixties, with a close-shaven head and a bulk to his limbs and torso that suggested he had been muscular when he was younger but had let himself go. Maggie reached up to the hologram and zoomed in on his face.

She cocked her head. "Why, should I recognize hi–" she cut herself off as something in the man's dark eyes called to a memory somewhere deep inside her. She didn't  _know_ this man, but she knew that face, those eyes – where had he…

" _Gagnon_ ," she murmured, and by the way the Avengers shifted and glanced at each other she knew she'd gotten his name right. "He… he was a part of the Wyvern Project." She swallowed and looked up. "But he wasn't important  _–_ he was just a tech, there to carry things around and answer to the Chief Scientist." Her brow furrowed as she followed her memories.  _Gagnon, Morin,_   _commencez l'installation._ "He put my wings on me for the first time." Her skin prickled.

"Well," Tony said heavily, "he knows you, too." His fingers fluttered and the picture of Gagnon suddenly started moving, the video surveillance playing out before her eyes.

 _"_ _We know you were a part of the Wyvern Project, Gagnon,"_ came Rhodey's voice, outwardly calm despite the tension in his shoulders.  _"Your friends at A.I.M. gave you up, so we also know that you're the one who provided the Wyvern trigger words._ " On screen, Rhodey placed his hands on the table.  _"You were free and clear after HYDRA dissolved, you didn't get caught up in the cleanup afterwards. So why would you get right back in bed with another group like them_?"

Gagnon sneered.  _"You're a sanctimonious fool._ "

" _Oh_?"

 _"_ _Why would I be_ glad  _that HYDRA fell?"_ Gagnon hissed. " _They had a vision, a beautiful one – peace in our world. You and people like you destroyed that vision. And now I see that Wyvern, that_ putain _, mouthing off about 'HYDRA's crimes'"._ His face twisted as he spoke about her, and Maggie thought she was used to people hating her but something about the look in his eyes made her skin crawl.  _"She does not appreciate what HYDRA did for her – they gave her everything: strength, skills, wings" –_ something dark shone in his eyes  _–_ " _and yet she spits in the face of her gifts._ "

Maggie watched screen-Rhodey's fists clench behind his back. Real-life Rhodey didn't seem to be doing much better, and she didn't look at Tony but she could feel the force of his rage even though he was standing behind her.

" _So that is why I joined A.I.M.,_ War Machine," Gagnon spat the name like a curse. " _For revenge. And to remind that ungrateful_ chienne  _who she really belongs to._ "

"That's enough," Tony snapped, and the screen cut out. He stepped up beside Maggie and his arm brushed against hers, warm and supporting.

Maggie took a long breath in through her nose, and out her mouth. The Avengers watched her warily. She could feel their anger and grief echoing in the silent air around them.

She cleared her throat. "It seems to me," she said carefully, "that Mr Gagnon is a little bitch."

Tony and Rhodey choked on air and Vision's brows shot up. Maggie laughed breathlessly at them. "I mean it," she said. "I've been done with HYDRA and their bullshit for so long now, I don't give a flying  _fuck_ what he thinks about me." She shrugged, and met Tony and Rhodey's wide eyes. "He's been thinking about me and been angry at me for years and I haven't given him a second thought. Now he's going to go the rest of his life in prison knowing that  _my family_ beat him, and I'm going to go on continuing not to think about him." She took another breath, and marveled at the fact that she felt physically lighter. "So. A.I.M. is still out there. They have my words, and so do a significant number of people at this facility, and in prison. That's a problem."

Tony, Rhodey and Vision still seemed taken aback at her profanity-laden dismissal of Gagnon, but Vision recovered first. "Indeed. On the way back from A.I.M.'s base Mr Stark and I discussed improving our security – F.R.I.D.A.Y. will learn from this attack, and now will continuously change her base composition to ensure that even with months of study and inside help an attacker will not be able to isolate her and disable her for any amount of time."

"I won't let you down again," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said out of nowhere.

Maggie shook her head. "You didn't let anyone down, F.R.I.D.A.Y."

Tony, who had been staring at her like she'd grown a second head, suddenly blinked and clapped his hands. "Right. And on the way back from the base I also designed a new version of the Manacle that is F.R.I.D.A.Y. equipped, but also has offline ways to zap you if you get triggered. We can go fabricate it right now. It'll never go down, Maggie, I promise."

"Also," Rhodey chimed in, "Ross and the Accords Committee know what went down, but they're more focused on the Avengers public image and making sure we stick to the rules and regulations in our hunt for A.I.M." He crossed his arms. "We don't think they're going to try to make a move against you, Maggie. Not a lot they can do anyway, you're still on trial and we're already working on upping security."

Rhodey and Vision started bouncing ideas about how to re-up facility security and hunt down A.I.M.'s remnants, and Maggie leaned back against a nearby desk and let the words wash over her.

She felt tired in her very bones, and her eyes ached from tears and exhaustion, but something had changed as she spoke to her brother and his teammates. She wasn't sure how, but the numbing hopelessness that had been draped over her like layers of snow had melted away. She felt  _strong_ again, like she had in those rare moments when she had taken her destiny into her own hands – escaping HYDRA, kissing Bucky on the dance floor, stepping into a room full of people to say  _My name is Margaret Stark, and I'm here to put an end to twenty five years of silence._

As the Avengers hypothesised about where A.I.M.'s remaining forces could have fled to, Tony looked over at Maggie. She smiled at him, and he came to lean against the desk beside her.

"You seem to be doing alright after being turned into a murder-bot," he murmured, elbow nudging hers.

Her face twisted, but she couldn't help the flicker of a smile at the corner of her mouth. If Tony was joking about it, that meant he felt like he could handle it.

She leaned into him. "I'm inclined to believe you all when you say it wasn't my fault. Maybe that makes me selfish _–_ "

" _–_  it really doesn't _–_ "

"– but I don't have the energy to be angry at the people who did this  _and_ myself."

"No good at multi-tasking?"

"Oh I'm plenty good at multi-tasking," she replied, and her eyes flicked up to the revolving images of the A.I.M. leaders who had escaped. "But I know what to focus on."

Tony slung an arm around her shoulders with a grin. "Good to have you back, Maggot."

 

* * *

 

The Avengers spent the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday boosting security after the attack. Maggie ended up with a brand-new Manacle – or rather,  _four_ brand new Manacles: a standard bracelet, two anklets and a sub-dermal chip in the base of her neck, each running on completely different systems so that if one got taken out, there would be three other fail safes. Each would safely knock her out the instant anyone said v _erre_  in her presence. She made a mental note to avoid French people.

Tony had also designed an Iron Man suit to encase Maggie in a crisis if  _those_ failed, which would be finished fabricating on Monday.

He also somehow found time to triple facility security (he was almost as protective of the Avengers and their home as he was of Maggie, and Maggie could feel his anger every time he saw an injured staff member).

On Sunday morning, Maggie listened once again as Tony reassured her non-stop that something like the attack would never happen again, and realized that this was unusual. He was going beyond protectiveness and into…  _oh._

Maggie leaned across the workshop table and rested her hand on his. He fell dead silent in the middle of a sentence and looked up at her with wide eyes.

"Tony," she said. "I'm not going to leave." He didn't move, but warm relief flooded his eyes. She cocked her head. "Not unless you want me to."

"I don't want you to," he said immediately. "I know you hero-types, the second you think you're a danger to other people you run away to protect the people around you."

Maggie eyed Tony's pinched face.  _Oh. This is about Bruce._ She let go of his hand, then leaned against the workbench and met his eyes. "Good thing I'm not a hero then," she said matter-of-factly. "I  _am_ dangerous. But… I don't think leaving is the answer. You're right, the odds of this happening again are… well, they're low. Touch wood." She knocked her knuckles gently against his skull and smiled at his disgruntled huff. She'd learned  _that_ superstitious tradition from Bucky. "I'm terrified because now I  _know_ that there are people who know my words, people I walk past every day. But I know you and the Avengers are going to track those A.I.M. assholes to the ends of the earth, and I know these new security measures will work, and I know that I am going to do everything within my power to get rid of these trigger words." She thought of a strange metal bead dissolving into thin air, and allowed herself to hope. She smiled at Tony. "The odds are in my favor."

He sighed and relaxed a little. "I'm glad. I had a whole speech planned for trying to convince you to stay, but what with everything that happened yesterday and y'know, the  _murder trial_  I was resorting to some pretty weird arguments."

"Such as?"

"Well let's see, the worst one was probably 'Ben and Jerry's is about to release that Stark-themed ice cream, and if you run away you might have to go to a country that doesn't have Ben and Jerry's _'_."

Maggie snorted. "I don't know, I do like ice cream." He rolled his eyes. "But speaking of the trial, Andrea and Diego are probably here by now. Wanna come and talk me down when I have my inevitable freak out?"

"Sure, sounds fun."

 

* * *

 

Maggie had gotten close with Andrea and Diego over the past months, but she wasn't prepared for the way they shot to their feet as soon as she entered the room and ran to her with hundreds of questions on their lips. Diego pulled her in for a hug and Andrea laid one hand on her shoulder (that was about as touchy-feely as Andrea ever got, which said a lot).

Once Maggie reassured them that she was relatively uninjured (the bruise on her forehead was still remarkably colorful, but her serum was working on healing it) and not seconds away from psychological breakdown, they had a strategy meeting.

"The world knows the Avengers Facility got attacked," Andrea said, one hand resting just a few inches away from Maggie's. "They also know that there were no fatalities and that you're still here. The court would understand if we asked for an adjournment" – Andrea watched Maggie's face, and when the familiar look of stubborn determination crossed it she sighed – "but I assume that, as ever, you're determined to overlook your personal health and safety to continue."

"Aw, Mags, she knows you so well," Tony said from where he was leaning back in his chair. His joking tone was slightly undermined by the tension in his face.

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Every moment we delay is another moment that A.I.M. – or whoever else – has to recover, and make a new plan to use my words against me. I'd rather we got this whole trial over with, no matter the outcome, and focus on the threat they present."

Tony's eyes darkened. "Maggie, if you go to jail–"

"Then I go to jail," she interrupted. "It… it'll  _suck_ , don't get me wrong, but what happened this weekend doesn't change anything about the trial. It's still up to twelve men and women to decide what happens to me. I'm going to let them do their jobs."

Tony fell silent. To her left, Diego let out a long sigh. " _¿Cómo te sientes,_ Maggie _?_ " [" _How do you feel,_ Maggie?"]

Maggie swallowed. She'd been so busy helping the Avengers triple down on security and track the remnants of A.I.M. that she hadn't stopped to think about it, apart from a quick meeting with Mai. She touched the split in her eyebrow and looked at Tony out of the corner of her eye. She recalled how exposed she'd felt sitting on the witness stand, baring her soul. What if it hadn't been enough?

She sighed. " _Aterrorizado,_ " [" _Terrified,_ "] she replied. "But that's never stopped me before."

 

* * *

 

16th January 2017  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Maggie showed up to court on Monday morning as she had done for the past few weeks, climbing out of the car in neat, professional clothes with Tony, Rhodey, Pepper, and her lawyers by her side. But everything felt different. Three days ago this courthouse had been her entire world, bound up with grief and fear and hope. But today her thoughts were cast outwards, to the  _dozens_ of people who knew how to turn her into the Wyvern, and inwards, where her soul felt shaky and torn apart. As she pushed through the shouting crowd into the courthouse, purple bruise and split eyebrow plain for all to see, she had an awful thought: Tony had been afraid that she'd run away to keep the people around her safe. But she didn't have to run – if she was sent to prison then she wouldn't be a threat any more.

As if sensing her thoughts, Tony crowded into her side and steered her past a persistent reporter with a charming smile and a quip.

"Chin up, Maggot," he murmured.

She followed his lead.

 

There was only one more witness left in the whole trial. He was last partly because of travel requirements, and partly because he had a different kind of testimony to give. His name was Miguel Alvarez.

When the courtroom doors opened to admit Miguel, Maggie turned in her seat to look at him and her heart swelled. She saw echoes of the scared little boy she'd met in the snowstorm as he glanced around nervously at the full courtroom, but he was different. He was twelve years old now, lankier and darker, and she saw hints of the man he would become in his face and bearing. He wore a suit, though he was obviously uncomfortable in it, and Maggie saw him glance at his mother in the gallery. His mother nodded, smiling encouragingly, and he followed the bailiff to the witness box.

Once he sat down he looked over at Maggie for the first time. She wasn't quite sure what to do, but he gave her an awkward wave before he swore to tell the truth (in stilted English) and took his seat.

Maggie smiled at him. She'd had reservations about asking someone so young to testify in a high profile trial, but Andrea and Diego had assured her that when they asked Miguel and his mother, they had been enthusiastic to help.

The courtroom, prickling with gossip about what had happened at the Avengers facility over the weekend, fell silent.

Diego got to his feet. "Your honor, my current witness speaks some English, but for his benefit I have asked for a prosecution-approved translator to be provided." He nodded to a tall, slim woman who assumed her position by the witness box with a smile at Miguel.

"You may begin your questions, Mr Martinez," Moore said.

Diego nodded to Miguel. "Mr Alvarez, thank you for coming today. Can you please describe what happened to you on the 14th of August, 2014?" He repeated his question in Spanish.

Miguel cleared his throat, then began. His translator followed soon after. "I was at the ski resort with my family – the Los Penitentes ski resort in Argentina. There was a bad storm that day, and we all had to get off the mountain. I was meant to go down the chairlift with my sister, but…" he swallowed and ducked his head. "I got angry at her and made her go on the chairlift before me. I went down by myself. But then the storm got worse, and I don't know what happened but the chairlift stopped moving."

Diego brought up a map of the resort and got Miguel to point to where the chair had been found the next day. Diego made it clear that the chair was miles away from the lodge at the bottom of the valley, and showed some footage of the storm that day. The courtroom echoed with the crackly recording of howling winds.

"So you were trapped on a chair in the middle of a snowstorm with fatal temperatures. How did you feel?"

Miguel rubbed his arm. "I was really scared. I remember thinking that I was going to blow away in the wind, or get too cold and just go to sleep like I read about in a book once." He looked up. "But then she came."

"Who came, Miguel?"

He swallowed. "The woman with the wings." Maggie felt the people in the gallery lean forward, almost as one. She knew this story, but it felt so odd to hear it after all the testimony of her time as the Wyvern – in each of those stories the arrival of the winged woman had meant death and violence. But Miguel's voice echoed with relief.  _Hope._

"Please tell us what happened."

"I didn't really see her at first. All of a sudden there was someone on the chairlift with me. She said… she said she was going to take me back to my mother. I was too scared to let go of the handlebar, but she made me let go and picked me up. I was so cold, I thought maybe I was dying. But then she said to me: ' _Estarás bien, pequeño_.  _Estás a salvo ahora._ '" The translator said it first in Spanish, then translated: " _You're going to be alright, little one. You're safe now._ "

"You remember exactly what she said?" asked Diego.

"Yeah," Miguel nodded. "I remember because she called me  _pequeño_ – little one. My grandmother calls me that, so I felt safer with her."

Maggie swallowed hard. Miguel still looked nervous, but everyone in the courtroom hung on to his every word.

"And then what happened?"

"She jumped off the chair. I screamed, but then we were  _flying_." Miguel's eyes shone. "It was like the storm didn't matter. We flew right down to the bottom of the mountain and to the main building of the lodge. She carried me inside and put me down. She took off her goggles – they were red – and then took off mine and stared at me." He paused, eyes distant. "She looked like an angel. The snow was stuck on her wings and made them glow. My grandmother told me about angels – she said they came to very special people. The woman put her fingers here" – Miguel tapped two fingers against the pulse point on his neck – "And I remember thinking that she was very warm _._ I asked her if she was an angel."

"What did the woman say?" asked Diego.

"She said no," Miguel said with a slight frown. A few people in the gallery chuckled. "She asked me my name, then said I had been brave and told me where to go to find my family."

"So you returned safely to your family?"

"Yes, they were in the big room with all the people and cameras."

"I believe we have footage of that reunion, Miguel, if you wouldn't mind seeing it?"

Miguel shrugged, and a video came up on the courtroom screen. Maggie had seen this video before. It showed a TV reporter talking animatedly in Spanish from inside the main lobby of the ski resort's main building. The cameraman spun just in time to capture a younger, wide-eyed and shivering Miguel with snow still dusting his blue jacket, as he stumbled into the room. Miguel stared at the busy room, then jumped as a high scream pierced the air, followed by a wail as his mother darted across the space towards him and pulled her into his arms. The screen suddenly flooded with people, and the video cut out.

Diego turned back to Miguel. "Miguel, do you see the person who saved you in this courtroom today?"

As if he'd been waiting the whole time for that question, Miguel's hand shot up to point straight at Maggie. She tried to conceal her smile, but she couldn't quite help it with the wide-eyed, adoring way he looked at her.

"Are you sure?" Diego asked, a small smile on his face as well.

Miguel nodded vigorously. "I'm sure. She took off her goggles to check on me, I remember what she looks like."

"Thank you," Diego said. "We've also got a few seconds of CCTV footage from a town fifty five miles away from Los Penitentes, recorded forty minutes before you were rescued. Would you mind taking a look at this footage and identifying the person it depicts?" A new video popped up on the screen. Maggie hadn't seen this one, and her eyebrow rose.

The footage was black and white, but it clearly showed a woman in a jacket and a scarf, carrying a backpack, running down a street in strong weather. Maggie inwardly tutted.  _Careless._ But she supposed it was a good thing she'd gotten caught in this instance.

Diego zoomed in on the footage and the woman's face came into view: it was clearly Maggie, her face fixed in a determined expression. Maggie cocked her head and felt something like sadness stir in her chest – in that footage she'd just parted ways with Bucky, only to see him again a few hours later. He'd handed her the backpack with the wings in it.  _Be careful._

"Mr Alvarez," Diego said. "Is this the woman you saw?"

"Yes," Miguel replied, and turned to smile at Maggie.

"This footage was captured seven months after the fall of HYDRA," Diego continued. "Are you saying that this woman saved your life?"

Miguel's grin didn't drop. "Yes."

Diego nodded. "Thank you very much, Mr Alvarez. No further questions."

 

Mallory cross-examined Miguel, going for the angle of 'you're just a kid you don't know what you saw', but with the CCTV footage and the evidence of just how far Miguel had journeyed from the chairlift to the lodge, Maggie could see that the court – and more importantly, the jury – weren't buying it.

 _Maybe it's enough_ , she wondered, even though she hated herself a little bit for the hope.  _Maybe._

 

* * *

 

love~cats~2017  
@millied   
Hey y'all, check out what I saw in the courthouse after the #wyverntrial broke for a recess! (video) 11:56 AM - 16 January 2017  9622  21.3K 

 

(attached video: Maggie Stark crouches in a courthouse corridor in front of Miguel Alvarez, while the boy's mother stands over his shoulder. Maggie speaks spoftly to Miguel, and suddenly he darts forward to plant a kiss on her cheek. Miguel's mother laughs, and the video shakes and then cuts out.)

 

Jo  
@joannagoanna   
Margaret Stark is a hero #wyverntrial #notguilty #acquit 12:02 PM - 16 January 2017  10.4K  25.6K 

 

don't @ me  
@s3949gee   
Defense resorting to evidence from twelve year olds to protect #thewyvern. Pretty sad if you ask me. 10:58 AM - 16 January 2017  4052  9802 

 

stripesorstars  
@jonesing   
I know the prosecutor has to cross-examine witnesses, but does he have to be such an ass while doing it? #wyverntrial 11:30 AM - 16 January 2017  3398  10.8K 

 

CNN  
@CNN   
The United States v Stark #wyverntrial has broken for lunch, but insider rumors suggest that the defense is about to rest their case. Follow us for more. 12:45 PM - 16 January 2017  248  541 

 

* * *

 

Maggie and her team ate deli sandwiches in a courthouse meeting room.

"Okay," Diego said, "We're certain we've done everything we can, so we're ready to rest our case. There's just closing arguments left after that. How are we looking on press? It won't influence the jury –ideally– but that could be an indicator of how they might be leaning."

Everyone turned to Pepper. The Kemp & Martinez law firm had press experts of their own, but Pepper was doing the work anyway and had connections they didn't, so they'd started relying on her.

Pepper put down her tuna salad sandwich and cleared her throat. "To be honest, it's very polarized. Public opinion ranges from 'Maggie Stark is a sweet, innocent child who must be protected at all costs'–"

Tony choked. "Is that an  _actual quote_ –"

"– to 'she must be executed'," Pepper finished, with a grimace. "Half the time it seems like perception relies on how people perceive superheroes in general."

Maggie frowned. "But I'm not a superhero."

Pepper gave her a  _look._

Andrea cleared her throat. "Anything else? Diego and I need to go over our closing statement."

Pepper blinked. "Oh right, uh… yes, this came out this morning while we were in court." She slid a Stark tablet out of her bag and set it up on the table where they could all see.

She had brought up a YouTube video of a TV interview. The program's opening titles cleared away to show the interviewer, an older woman in a grey pantsuit, sitting across from–

"Hey, I know her," Maggie dropped her sandwich and leaned closer.

It was the woman from the bathroom, Hayley Mitchell. After they'd spoken alone together and Maggie had explained everything she knew about Ms Mitchell's brother's death, they'd seen each other around the courthouse. Ms Mitchell was there most days for the testimony, usually with bags under her eyes – Maggie suspected she had a night job or class, and yet she still kept coming. At the start of the trial the other woman had watched Maggie with angry, hateful eyes, but that look had since changed into something a little more considering. Now, on Pepper's tablet, Ms Mitchell's face was filled with a determination that Maggie recognized.

"Thank you for joining me today Hayley," the interviewer said. "You're here today for your brother Ben, right?"

"That's right," Ms Mitchell said. "My brother was my best friend growing up. He was a lot smarter than me though, and he ended up in S.H.I.E.L.D. I never really knew what he did because he had to keep secrets from everyone in his life, but he was still my best friend. I was devastated when he died." Ms Mitchell's grief flickered in her eyes, but she didn't cry.

"How did he die?" asked the interviewer.

"They said it was an allergic reaction and I… I believed them." Her face twisted. "But after HYDRA fell, we found out it wasn't an allergic reaction at all. He'd been poisoned."

"I'm very sorry," murmured the interviewer. "And you know who poisoned him, don't you?"

"I do." Ms Mitchell's chin lifted. "It was the Wyvern. I found out a few months after the HYDRA information leak. No details, just that a hit was put out on him."

"You've been attending the trial here in New York, yes?"

"Nearly every day," Ms Mitchell confirmed. She took a breath. "I've been  _so angry_ ever since I found out the truth about Ben's death. Angry since he died, probably. And all this time I've been looking for… justice, I think. Maybe revenge. I've been in a lot of pain." Tears glittered in her eyes and she reached up to swipe them away. "I don't wish the pain I felt on anyone, though I know there are plenty of people out there like me."

The interviewer didn't speak – it was clear that there were words waiting on Ms Mitchell's tongue, making her eyes flicker with turmoil. After a long, silent moment, she let out a breath. "I lost my brother," she murmured, and nodded to herself. "He was murdered. But even with that pain, I'm… I'm glad I had someone to tell me why he died."

"Someone?"

Ms Mitchell looked up. "Margaret Stark. I first came to her in anger, to confront the person who I blamed for my brother's death, and I… didn't really know what to expect. But I looked into her eyes and I saw that she was grieving as well – not for herself, but for  _Ben._ When I next came to speak to her, I asked her why my brother died. And she told me everything she knew, everything that the HYDRA files hadn't said. Turns out Ben had discovered signs of HYDRA in S.H.I.E.L.D. two years before anyone else did, and he was trying to expose them." Ms Mitchell's voice trembled and she paused to wipe away more tears. "Ben died defending what he believed in."

There was another long silence. "How do you feel about Margaret Stark now?"

Ms Mitchell bit her lip. "Margaret Stark is… I'll never be able to forget that her hands are the ones that ended Ben's life, but I know it wasn't her mind. HYDRA could have made  _me_ kill him."

"You're referring to the HYDRA trigger words," the interviewer interjected.

"That, and everything… everything else. The programming, the brainwashing, that awful chair. Even when I got my answers about Ben I kept going back to court, because we… we need to  _acknowledge_ what was done." She cleared her throat. "I've been in the courtroom, and I've gone through the HERACLES website nearly every day. I'm glad that Margaret Stark is giving us all the information about her time with HYDRA, and I don't think that should stop. But we shouldn't be trying to punish her." Ms Mitchell met the interviewer's eyes with something like ferocity in her gaze. "She's gone through lifetimes of punishment already."

"You're remarkably empathetic, Hayley," said the interviewer, her voice soft. "You said you came here for your brother, but is there anything else you'd like to say?"

Ms Mitchell clasped her hands together in her lap. "Yes. I don't have the luxury of holding on to resentment any longer – particularly when I don't think the person I've been angry at for so long is even deserving of my anger. I need to forgive, for my own soul, but I also need to apologize to – to Ms Stark." She took a deep breath, then looked up at the camera. "Ms Stark. I've been hating you for two years now, but… I know now that you didn't want that violence. So I forgive you. And I'll grieve for you." She swallowed, her voice thick. "I'll grieve for you and your lost years, like I grieve for my brother."

The interviewer said something poetic to finish off the interview and the TV program went back to discussing the upcoming closing arguments in the trial, but Maggie didn't notice any of it. All she could see was the afterimage of Ms Mitchell's eyes, filled with grief and determination that echoed somewhere deep within Maggie.

_So I forgive you._

Tony's arm settled around Maggie's shoulders and she took in a shuddering breath.

_And I'll grieve for you._

"She's not alone," came Pepper's soft voice. "The interview's going viral. With that and your testimony from last week, other family members of victims have come out and said similar things. See?"

Maggie looked through blurry vision at the tablet, where Pepper had brought up an article published only an hour ago. The headline read:  _#IForgiveYou: How the Wyvern Trial Changed Minds and Turned Hearts._

Maggie hid her face in her hands and cried, her shoulders heaving. She wasn't sure what she was hiding from.


	69. Chapter 69

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, it looks like weekly chapters are the norm for now. Sorry all, but now I'm not travelling hopefully I can write enough to get back to the regular schedule :)

 

New York Bulletin  
@newyorkbulletin   
BREAKING: "Your honor, the defense rests its case". Wyvern trial closing statements begin. 1:22 PM - 16 January 2017  302  542 

 

* * *

 

The courtroom rippled with energy. It was packed with people as usual, but now there was a sense of finality in the air. It reminded Maggie of dangling from the edge of a cliff, nothing but open air and sharp rocks below.

"Mr Mallory," rumbled Judge Moore. "Are you prepared to give your closing arguments?"

Mallory got to his feet. "Yes, your honor."

"You may begin."

 

Closing arguments were an opportunity for both sides to sum up and comment on the evidence, and Mallory didn't hold back. He went over each shred of evidence damning Maggie, reiterating the violence and efficiency of each murder and the impact of each crime. Once he reached the last count of terrorism he paused for a moment and put his hands on his hips, looking down at the ground. Chairs in the gallery creaked.

"Ms Stark is undeniably someone who has suffered a lot of trauma in her life," he said. Mallory looked up. "But pain is no excuse for causing pain, and Ms Stark is also one of the most prodigious serial killers of our time. As you have heard over and over she killed, maimed, terrorized, tortured, and scarred. You have heard from people who suffered, and heard evidence about people who can no longer speak to their suffering." His brow creased. "The defense has argued that Ms Stark had no control over her actions for twenty two years." He paused to cock his head at the jury. "She had no control at five years old." He nodded. "Okay. She had no control at ten years old." He nodded again. "Okay. But when she gets to twenty? Twenty five? At what point is she no longer too young, naïve and powerless to break away from an organisation she now claims to hate so much?"

Mallory paced the length of the jury box. When he spoke again his voice was different. "And let's not forget who Ms Stark is. She is a  _highly intelligent_ individual who went through years of training in infiltration, assimilation, and manipulation. You cannot take a person with such skills at face value – Ms Stark wants you to believe that she is a helpless victim, unable to resist persuasion from HYDRA generals. This is a story – a fantasy – that best suits Ms Stark. Some of what she says may be the truth, but we can't believe a single word that comes out of her mouth." He shook his head. "We have only the  _facts._ And those facts show us that Ms Stark led a long, bloody life of violence and death. Those facts show us that Ms Stark received vast sums of money for her work with HYDRA. Those facts show us that with just a few short trigger words, Ms Stark could at any time become a supremely powerful and violent killer." At the defense desk, Maggie went white. "Ms Stark  _refuses_ to share these trigger words with anyone; be they psychiatrist, scientist, or security expert. She is an ongoing danger to the public.

"The defense will say that Ms Stark only committed crimes that HYDRA told her to. But once she was 'free' from HYDRA, what did she do? She used that 'freedom' to flee justice, fight against the U.N.'s Sokovia Accords, and help fugitive vigilantes break the law. That doesn't sound like an innocent person."

Mallory paused again. "Yes, Ms Stark suffered. But who else suffered?" At that he looked the jury in the eyes and recited a list of names. Thirty six names in total, that he delivered in a low, emotional voice without once checking a sheet of paper.

When he finished he drew himself tall. "These are the people that Margaret Stark murdered. That she  _admits_ to murdering. I'm sure there are more out there that Ms Stark has conveniently forgotten. But she cannot erase these people from the narrative. I, and the nation, implore you to bring them justice."

With a last nod to the jury, Mallory turned on his heel and returned to the prosecution desk.

* * *

 

Greta Thimble - New York Times  
@gretathimble   
Prosecutor David Mallory once again reminding us why he's the favorite child of the United States Attorney's Office #wyverntrial #closingarguments 1:59 PM - 16 January 2017  143  203 

 

molly chatwick  
@chatwickmoll   
@davidmallory do u have to be such a freaking tool 1:55 PM - 16 January 2017  239  406 

 

* * *

 

"Mr Martinez, Mrs Kemp? Do you wish to make a closing argument?"

Andrea got to her feet. "We do, your honor." On her way out from behind the defense desk, Andrea squeezed Maggie's shoulder.

She took her position in the open space before the jury and drew in a deep breath. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," she began. "I want to take the opportunity now to thank you for your patience and diligence. I think we can all agree that this has been a difficult trial filled with pain and heartache. We have seen and heard horrific things, things which will remain with us for the rest of our lives." Andrea shook her head, and Maggie could see from the darkness in her eyes that she  _felt_ her words.

"I don't think there's a single person who's seen and heard the things that we have, who doesn't want justice for those people. For the people who died, and suffered, and feared for their lives. Those people  _deserve_ justice – it's what's right, in the eyes of the law and basic human decency.

"We've just heard the names of thirty six people," she continued. "Margaret Stark's hands ended their lives. We don't dispute that, and that isn't the question before us today. The question today is whether Margaret Stark is  _guilty_ of these murders."

Andrea cocked her head. "In many ways this is a complicated trial. But when it comes down to it, the law gives us two requirements of guilt. There's the guilty act, and the guilty mind. We require both to convict." She held up both hands. "We have seen the guilty act in this courtroom time and time again. It has been bloody, and painful. We have seen brave witnesses tell their stories." Andrea dropped a hand. "But the question here is the guilty mind. Did Margaret Stark, with her full mental capacity, choose to kill these people in the knowledge that what she did was wrong? Did Margaret Stark have a guilty mind when she committed these crimes?"

She paused. "This is the decision before you today. And I hope that we have shown you that the answer is  _no_. I don't believe I need to pore over each detail of the tortures Margaret Stark underwent again. I'm sure that they are forever branded in your minds, as they are in mine. We have seen the Memory Suppression Chair, the fully-conscious surgeries, the manipulation, the constant, all-consuming programming. We have heard from those who bent her mind to their will."

Andrea's voice was heavy as she went on. "Whose is the guilty mind here? Allow me to construct a scenario, one I believe you're familiar with: you take a five year old girl – a  _child_ – and you strip away her memories, her will, and her choice. You treat her like a weapon, you  _program_ her mind to your exact specifications. You keep up a regimen of memory wipes and obedience trigger words until what you have is an utterly compliant slave to your will, devoid of choice and intent. There is no point at which such a slave becomes old enough, or intelligent enough, to break away from that level of utter control.

"What you have is the Wyvern." Andrea paused, taking a moment to eye each member of the jury. "We've all seen the Wyvern, seen her black wings and the death she dealt out. We've heard tales of monstrosity, all hidden behind a black mask and glowing red eyes.

"But the mask is just that: a mask. It wasn't there to hide the Wyvern's identity but to suppress her humanity. Because HYDRA took her humanity from her. They turned her into a weapon." Andrea's voice became forceful, strong, with an undercurrent of emotion that tugged deep in your gut. "How can a weapon be guilty? We don't convict the knife or the gun, but the one who wields it." Her eyes darkened. "And we know who wielded the Wyvern."

She paused again, taking a few paces across the courtroom. "Margaret Stark is  _not_ a weapon. She is a person: she feels, and thinks, and she has choices. She has used those choices for good: she broke away from HYDRA, she saved a terrified young boy from certain death in a snowstorm, she helped to capture the culprit behind the UN bombing. And she  _asked_ for this trial. She told you why: she wants to bring HYDRA's crimes out of the shadows, she wants to bring light to the dark places. She has done this at great personal cost, but she would do it again in a heartbeat.

" _This_ is Margaret Stark. Not HYDRA's weapon, not a blank mind, but a person."

Andrea spread her hands. "It is a testament to her character that she was able to break through such rigorous, extended programming and act against HYDRA's wishes. We've seen countless evidence that such a feat in all probability should have been impossible. But  _she_   _did it._

"She did it and she is here today. She is here for justice, like the rest of us. She is here to put an end to HYDRA, who made her life a misery, and to seek justice for the victims of HYDRA. And I say victims of HYDRA, because they are not her victims. It was HYDRA who wanted them killed, it was HYDRA who gave the order. They did not contract my client, ask her to do them a favor, or offer her rewards for carrying out their crime.

"No, Maggie Stark is a victim herself; tortured physically, emotionally, and mentally from an impossibly young age until she had no choice but to be an instrument of HYDRA's will." She faced the jury front on, her hands loose by her sides. "You cannot find Ms Stark guilty of these crimes – guilt necessitates intent, choice, and Ms Stark knew none of that until merely three years ago. Guilt necessitates a guilty mind, so Ms Stark is not the guilty party here." Andrea's eyes burned. "HYDRA is. And I am only sorry that they will never see a court of law."

She ran her eyes over the jury once more, her shoulders straight and her gaze fixed. Maggie saw Bucky in her, just for a moment, in the way she stood up and said  _this is what's right._

Then Andrea inclined her head, all dignity and respect, and said "thank you."

And it was over.

 

* * *

 

There were only two hours left in the workday, so when Judge Moore gave the jury their instructions and sent them into deliberation no one expected them to reach a verdict in such a short time. Sure enough, after two hours Judge Moore called court to order to instruct the jury that deliberations were finished for the day, and to begin again tomorrow morning.

Maggie left the courthouse in a whirlwind of sound and light.

 

* * *

 

Hiro Kamizato  
@kamileon   
The prosecution had to prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that Margaret Stark is guilty of the crimes. But mind control? Torture? Memory erasure? If that evidence doesn't make you think twice about her culpability, I don't know what to say to you. #wyverntrial #notguilty 6:45 PM - 16 January 2017  8382  18.7K 

 

Phoebe Wilkes  
@feebie   
She killed THIRTY SIX PEOPLE! #wyverntrial #guilty 8:43 PM - 16 January 2017  9442  15.2K 

 

* * *

 

They spent the night at the mansion. The Avengers Facility was still filled with clean up crews and the mansion made Maggie feel closer to her parents, which was something her heart needed right now.

They had dinner together: Maggie, all three Avengers, Pepper, Maggie's lawyers, and Shirley (no one commented on Maggie's close relationship with the old woman, so she thought maybe they knew who Shirley was, or they were too concerned about the trial to bother asking questions). The meal was… uncomfortable. They'd ordered Chinese takeout and tipped the bemused delivery driver well, but the food wasn't the problem. Everyone was being forcefully optimistic while not-really talking about the trial, and it gave Maggie a headache. She didn't say it, but all she could think was:  _the last meal. The last, the last._

They very pointedly did not check the news. But Maggie had been doing this long enough now to know that all anyone would be talking about was Maggie and her guilt.

Eventually, Tony cracked. All Maggie had done was ask for him to please pass the egg rolls, but for some reason the simple request made him stiffen and turn to Andrea and Diego.

"What do you think?" he asked.

Andrea cocked an eyebrow at him. "What do we think?" Diego blinked, his mouth full of fried rice.

"You know what I'm talking about. What do you think the jury is going to decide?"

Maggie frowned at him. "Can I please have the–"

"I'm hopeful," Andrea replied. "We made a good case, we did everything we could. Everyone at this table did their best. It's up to the jury now."

Tony leaned forward. "Don't bullshit me Kemp, what do you think?"

" _Tony_ ," Maggie interjected, glaring, but Andrea waved a hand.

"It's okay," she said, then let out a sigh. Shirley patted her knee. "Look, a case like this is… unprecedented. At the end of the day, we asked the jury to find Maggie not guilty of over thirty murders that she definitely  _did do_. The 'guilt' here is… ephemeral. That can't come down to a science, or some equation of likelihood. It's going to come down to the jurors and what they personally believe." Andrea spread her hands, her sharp eyes meeting Tony's fixed gaze. "So I'm afraid I don't know."

Silence followed her words.

"Can I please have the egg rolls," Maggie finally said, and Tony rolled his eyes and tossed the paper bag of egg rolls at her.

"Aren't you worried?" he snapped, brow furrowed.

She opened the bag and fished out a couple of rolls. "Who, me? I feel great." She dropped the rolls in her bowl and then looked up at Tony's exasperated face. "Of  _course_ I'm freaking worried, Tony. But what do you want me to do? Cry and scream and shake in my boots until the jury comes back?" Everyone else very studiously ate their food as Maggie spoke. "Sure I might feel like doing that, but that would just end up making me feel worse and it would suck for you guys. I don't know what the jury's going to decide, and I can't  _do_ anything until they come back. Right now I just want to have dinner. Unless you want to fight some more?" She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he sat back in his seat with a disgruntled expression.

There was a long moment as they just stared at each other, while the others at the table fidgeted with chopsticks and glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes. Vision, who wasn't eating, studied the ceiling.

Finally, Tony rolled his eyes again. "Pass the goddamn egg rolls."

 

* * *

 

January 17th, 2017  
Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

Court opened the next day to a tense scene. Maggie and the others had to enter the courthouse through a back entrance because the crowds outside were too thick, almost down the block. The courtroom itself was… the very atmosphere inside made Maggie shift uncomfortably in her seat. The air crackled with anticipation, as if everyone was poised on a knife's edge of action or reaction. It felt like the air did before a fight broke out. The skin on the back of Maggie's neck prickled, and when Judge Moore walked in she saw a single bead of sweat trickle down his forehead.

Her eyes flicked to the jury as they entered. She'd gotten used to their faces over the past month, so she knew how they looked when they were stressed. The mousy-haired woman who usually sat in the front right of the jury box watched Judge Moore with lips so tightly pressed together they were white. The man in the back corner tapped an anxious rhythm against his thigh.

Eventually Maggie had to look away – she couldn't watch them for a second longer wondering what was in their minds, or she'd go crazy.

Judge Moore repeated various instructions for the jury, then ordered them back into sequestered deliberation. Maggie finally looked up to watch them file out of the room, and thought  _I don't envy you._

 

The crowds were too thick to leave the courthouse, and Andrea and Diego recommended it was best to stay close anyway, so Maggie and her team set themselves up in one of the courthouse meeting rooms.

They weren't idle: the Avengers were still hot on A.I.M.'s trail, so Maggie took the time to get updates on their hunt and to offer her own skills. She ended up chasing an electronic trail with Tony and F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help, using a portable holographic interface that Tony had brought with him. Maggie buried herself in the familiarity of hunting a target, and tried not to think about the jury.

Pepper tapped away at her tablet on the meeting room's sofa. Rhodey, after realizing that he didn't have much to contribute until they found A.I.M.'s secondary base, sat next to Pepper and played Angry Birds on his phone. Vision sat at the table simultaneously following up leads about A.I.M. and monitoring the press about the trial. Andrea and Diego worked on a stack of papers at the end of the table – when Maggie asked about it they just said "paperwork" but she could tell they were already working on her appeal. The thought made her feel sick, so she turned back to the blue hologram to distract herself.

She wouldn't be able to help find A.I.M. from prison.

 

* * *

CNN  
@CNN   
Margaret Stark - Guilty, or Not Guilty? Take our poll. 8:28 AM - 17 January 2017  818  2378 

 

 _"As you can see the crowd outside the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse now spans several blocks_ ,  _and other crowds have formed in Times Square and other landmarks in other U.S. cities_ – _"_

 

 _"_ –  _breathlessly awaiting the Margaret Stark verdict_ – _"_

 

 _"_ –  _no sign of Margaret Stark or her team, and one can only imagine the atmosphere_ – _"_

 

_Twitter Top 5 trending hashtags: #wyverntrial, #notguilty, #guilty, #convict, #acquit_

 

"–  _jury has now been in deliberation for three hours in total_ –"

 

" _Margaret Stark's fate now rests in the hands of twelve individuals."_

 

* * *

 

After a few hours Maggie couldn't focus on A.I.M. anymore – she could hear people shouting on the street below, and she had an odd sense like she needed to be  _aware_ , that she couldn't bury her head in the sand any longer.

She shut down the hologram and leveled her gaze at Tony. He blinked at the sudden absence of their geographical projections, but when he caught the look on her face his jaw clenched.

"Maggie, what are you–"

She glanced around. The others were all absorbed in their own tasks, displaying varying levels of anxiety, so she figured she and Tony could speak privately.

She turned back to her brother. "You're going to be okay," she said.

"Maggie…"

"If this doesn't go the way we hope it does," she continued, ignoring the way the words made his face tighten, "you're going to be okay. D'you know how I know?"

He just watched her, his eyes suddenly dark.

"You… you achieved so much and you were so incredible for the twenty five years I was gone. So I know you'll be okay. And if I do have to leave you again, then I've got some requests for you."

His fingers twitched. "Anything."

"I want you to not be afraid to the turn to the people around you for support." She glanced at Pepper and Rhodey, side by side on the couch, and Vision by the window. "They showed up for me in a big way, and we both know they'll show up for you, too." She gripped his arm. "And… when you're ready, there's… when you need to, you know that Vision, Rhodey, and Pepper aren't the only ones who'll show up for you." She let her eyes flicker to his suit jacket pocket, where she knew he kept the flip phone.

Tony's eyes darkened but he didn't avoid her gaze. He just looked back at her, as dozens of emotions flickered across his face too fast for her to read them.

Eventually, he cleared his throat and managed to say: "You don't think you're going to be acquitted, do you?" His voice was low, as if hiding a secret from the others in the room, and his eyes were intent on her face.

Maggie swallowed. "I don't know, Tony," she whispered. "There's nothing I can do at this point. I want to make sure that if I go down, I don't take you down with me."

He sat back, still watching her. "Maggie, I… you are…" he twisted his hands frustratedly. "Sometimes I think, you know, after everything you… I mean, I admire your…" she waited him out patiently, noting his flailing hands and the look of consternation on his face. Eventually he sighed and dropped his hands. "You know what I mean?"

She smiled. "I think I do."

He pulled her into his side, arm half-tucked over her as if he could protect her from the sentence hanging over her head. If Maggie listened hard enough, with her ear pressed against his expensive suit, she could hear his heart beating.

Her fingers crept up to her own chest, to the pearl pendant tucked under her blouse. The pads of her fingers smoothed over the round shape of it.

_How did we get here, Bucky?_

 

* * *

 

WHiH World News Reporter, Chess Roberts: "Well Christine this has been a tumultuous and emotional trial, and all that's left now is the wait for the jury to reach a verdict. And what a wait it is: there are news crews from over thirty different countries here at the courthouse today, and early estimates show that there are at  _least_ 100 million people in the United States alone watching and waiting for the verdict of this trial. It's clear that the Margaret Stark trial has turned heads the world over, bound up as it is in issues of politics, HYDRA's legacy, superhero regulation, and the Avengers. We've heard testimony from analysts from dozens of world-class organisations, from brave and injured victims, from convicted HYDRA agents, from all three Avengers and the CEO of Stark Industries, and Maggie Stark herself. I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that this is the trial of the century, Christine. And we're here today to watch history unfold."

 

* * *

Diana Assad  
@dianaaaa   
I believe her. Are we really going to punish a victim? #wyverntrial 11:36 AM - 17 January 2017  7602  13.2K 

 

Mike Quinley  
@quinleyreports   
I've got my reservations about how complicit Margaret Stark was with HYDRA, but I'm really not comfortable with the possibility of her just being released onto the streets as a free woman. She's dangerous. #wyverntrial 1:43 PM - 17 January 2016  548  1644 

 

* * *

 

 _CBS News:_ "Including the two hours of deliberation yesterday, the jurors have now been deliberating for six hours. We've got legal expert Dr George Yanuk here to give some insight into the jury deliberation process. Dr Yanuk, how much longer do you think the jury will deliberate for?"

"Good to be here, Lucy. I'm afraid there's just no way to predict how long jury deliberation might last, but that's something that's fascinated experts in the area for a long time. It depends on a lot of things including the length of the trial itself, the amount of evidence, and the individuals within the jury."

"What might the jury be doing right now?"

"Well, the first thing any jury has to do is elect a foreperson – the Margaret Stark jury probably did that yesterday, so today they'll be getting down to business."

"What does that involve?"

"Honestly, that depends on the jury. With such a long trial, with so much evidence and testimony, I'd expect them to take a while to go over it all. Juries tend to be pretty good at their jobs – they're respectful, practical, and do what the court asks of them to the best of their ability. In this case I'm sure they're also aware of the immense political and media pressure. This jury has also been sequestered for over a month now, and I'm sure that stressor is playing on their minds."

"What does a longer deliberation mean for the outcome?"

"Again, that depends. Studies have shown that juries usually take longer to decide to acquit than they do to convict, and also that longer deliberations also tend to lead to more accurate verdicts. When deliberation stretches on for a long time that can either mean that the jury is doing their due diligence and being conscientious about the evidence, or there's a significant difference of opinion within the jury."

"Do you think that's the case here?"

"I'm not sure I'd say that at this stage – like I said, there's a lot of evidence in this trial, and I'd say the jury has a pretty lengthy moral debate ahead of them when it comes to Margaret Stark's culpability."

"How do juries look at evidence?"

"We tend to see two types of jurors: the storytellers, who construct a narrative of the crimes in their heads, and if any evidence doesn't fit with that narrative they discard it. They usually come to a verdict pretty quickly. Then there are the 'scientists', who look at the evidence on its own and don't seek a single 'true' narrative. They tend to take a little longer, and reach more complex verdicts. But as for which kinds of jurors are currently deliberating at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, I'm afraid I can't say."

"Fascinating, Dr Yanuk, thank you. I'll end with one last question – what will happen if the jury can't reach a unanimous decision?"

"Well, Lucy, the judge will strongly urge them to reach a unanimous decision, but if they are irreparably deadlocked then that will result in a mistrial – at that point in time it's up to the United States Attorneys to decide whether or not to retrial Ms Stark."

"Do you think they would?"

Dr Yanuk hesitated. "Well I don't want to speak out of turn, Lucy, but one thing that many experts have noted about this trial is the US Attorneys Office's dogged pursuit of charges against Margaret Stark. It's clear that there's a lot of political pressure to charge, sentence, and incarcerate Ms Stark, and with that level of interest I'd say that yes, a retrial would probably occur."

"Thank you Dr Yanuk, that's all we have time for. Let's go back to Katie at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse."

 

* * *

bianca eats and reads  
@bebianca   
Each minute that goes by without a word from the #wyverntrial jury is giving me ANXIETY 11:52 PM - 17 January 2017  344  2304 

bianca eats and reads  
@bebianca   
Update: I have refreshed my twitter feed so many times that I'm on 2% battery. H E L P. 12:34 PM - 17 January 2017  402  5663 

 

* * *

BuzzFeed  
@BuzzFeed   
15 tweets that shook the world during the Wyvern trial: buzzfeed.com/3yR9PGe 12:02 PM - 17 January 2017  254  862 

 

* * *

 

Alex Reynolds  
@alexreynolds   
Guilty, guilty, guilty. There's no other option. 1:45 PM - 17 January 2017  3002  5583 

 

* * *

 

Excerpt from  _The New York Bulletin_ article "Before the Verdict" _,_ by Karen Page _: As the world stops for this moment of waiting, let's take the time to acknowledge the importance of this trial no matter what its outcome may be._

_No matter what happens to Margaret Stark, she has achieved what she set out to do when she stood in front of the world and broke her silence. She told her story: the ugly, violent course of her life and the good that came in its wake. She gave resolution to victims' families who might never have known why their loved ones had to die. She exposed the unwritten underbelly of HYDRA that not even Captain America and the Black Widow could reveal. As Senator Rickley put it just this morning: "I am now confident that the ghost of HYDRA has no more secrets left to hide"._

_No matter what happens now, this trial has changed the way we talk about guilt, and responsibility. The brainwashing defense was previously seen as a laughable last-ditch legal defense, but this trial has shown us that the world can continue to surprise us. This trial has shown us that our minds, memories and identities might not be as secure as we believe them to be._

_No matter what the jury decides, this trial has shown us the worst of humanity. We've seen scientists who tortured children, men who manipulated the world from the shadows, we've seen killers and monsters._

_But this trial has also shown us the best of humanity. It has, impossibly, shown us hope: a young boy who looked into his rescuer's face and saw an angel, a victim of HYDRA who built a sanctuary for people in pain, the powerful and humbling #IForgiveHer movement._

_This trial gave us the story of a woman who broke away from the people who made her believe she was inhuman, who made her feel lesser. A woman who not only regained her humanity but clawed and fought for a life and a family. This woman's story is a source of inspiration for hundreds of people who feel they have reached their breaking point_ –  _it's a reminder that no matter how cold and how dark a life becomes, there is always a way back._

_No matter what happens to Margaret Stark, this trial has changed us all._

_She knew it would._

 

* * *

 

WHiH World News  
@WHiHWorldNews   
We're now five hours in to today's #wyverntrial jury deliberations, making this seven total hours of deliberation. The crowds outside the courthouse have quietened down but no one is going home - everyone is waiting for a verdict. 2:01 PM - 17 January 2017  208  864 

 

* * *

 

Montreal, Canada

Steve couldn't seem to stop bouncing his knee. Sam had been splitting his attention between the TV and Steve's knee for the better part of an hour, fascinated at his super soldier friend's rare display of nerves. Steve hadn't looked this nervous even before the airport fight in Germany. Though, Sam supposed, at least then Steve had had a plan. Now all they could do was sit and watch.

Nat came in from the kitchen and tossed a bottle of water at Steve. He caught it just before it hit him in the head and glared at her, but she just shrugged and went to give another bottle to Wanda (a lot more carefully). Wanda nodded her thanks and went back to watching the TV, round-eyed and half curled up in her chair.

It wasn't a great idea for them all to be in the same place like this, particularly so close to the States, but after the shooting and the news of an attack at the Avengers Facility they'd all wanted to be close to New York just in case they were needed. So they found themselves in one of Natasha's many worn-down safehouses, glued to the television.

Steve kept turning his flip phone over in his fingers with a half-hopeful, half-terrified look on his face.

Nat squeezed Wanda's shoulder then came over to sit beside Steve. "You need to relax, Steve."

Sam sighed and tipped his head back against the wall. As a therapist he knew that 'you need to relax' was probably never going to be effective, and as Steve Rogers' friend he knew that it was absolutely 100% ineffective.

Steve looked up. "I promised Bucky I'd look out for her, Nat, I don't think  _this_ " – he gestured to the television, which showed helicopter footage of the thick crowds around the courthouse – "was what he had in mind. I–"

"What could you have done?" Natasha interrupted. "This is beyond throwing your shield at a problem, Steve, this is… politics, and choices, and agendas."

"That's what it started as," Sam interjected, drawing the attention of the safehouse's other three occupants. "But now it's just about twelve ordinary people, and whether or not they think Maggie is guilty."

"But she's  _not_ ," Wanda breathed, her fingers twitching against her knees.

"I think we're all in agreement there," Nat said with a wry smile. She turned back to the TV. "It's about whether  _they_ are."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Steve's knee start jumping again. He sighed. "Steve." The blonde looked up, jaw clenched. "We can't influence whatever happens in that courtroom. But we  _can_ be there if anything goes wrong. And Shuri said she's really close to a cure for the trigger words, so we can help Maggie with that no matter where she is. You haven't failed."

Steve turned back to the television, where a reporter was interviewing a man wearing a t-shirt with a design of a broken Iron Man mask on it. "Lock her up!" the man chanted. "Lock her up!"

Steve sighed and his knee fell still. "Kinda feels like I have."

 

* * *

Morganne  
@morganne   
Do you think we'd even be having this #wyverntrial if all the mess with the Avengers and the Accords didn't happen? This isn't justice. It's politics, with the power-hungry Secretary Ross pulling the strings 2:20 PM - 17 January 2017  4308  11.3K 

 

* * *

 

Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, New York City

When the bailiff came it was almost anti-climactic. Maggie was looking out at New York with her head on Tony's shoulder, so when the door opened she just assumed it was someone coming or going, and kept her gaze fixed on the window. She imagined flying over the skyscrapers, over the glittering river and the wide green space of Central Park.

So she was relaxed, her body loose and her eyes on the city she'd come to love when she heard: "The jury's reached a verdict. Please come downstairs."

Tony tensed up under her ear, and as if it was contagious Maggie's whole body went rigid. The bailiff left, leaving her frozen by her brother's side and staring out the window. Her stomach plummeted.

 _Verdict._ It sounded so final.

Probably because it was.

Tony's hand settled over hers, his fingers rough with calluses and shaking slightly. "C'mon Maggot," he said in a strangled voice. "Up and at 'em."

Suddenly she found she could move again. She got to her feet, numb to the eyes on her, and walked toward the open door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY.


	70. Chapter 70

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dive in, lovelies. It's a long one.
> 
> Edit: Added in a 'news story screen shot' made by Travelilah, and some tweets.

 

* * *

 

Getty Images  
@GettyImages   
Image: In the press gallery at the #wyverntrial, journalists poise to be the first to report the verdict. 3:02 PM - 17 January 2017  50  131 

 

* * *

 

Maggie paced down the aisle of the courtroom towards the defense desk, counting each wooden pew she passed. There were seven pews on each side, but she already knew that. She just needed to remind herself of the fact to keep herself from grinding to a halt and breaking out in a scream. She wondered why courtrooms seemed so much like churches.

She passed the seventh pew and headed for the defense desk, then abruptly stopped.

"Maggie?" Diego murmured from beside her.

She turned slowly and shuffled a few paces toward Tony, who was about to slide onto the first pew. He didn't say a word, just straightened and let her wrap her arms around him once more, his own hands coming up to press against her back. She was sure she left bruises on his shoulders, but neither of them said anything. He held her so tight that she felt her heart pounding against her ribs.

She felt hands brush her shoulders and the back of her head – Pepper, Rhodey, Vision.

"Maggie," Andrea called in a soft voice. She pulled away and without looking at Tony's face took her seat at the defense desk.

"We made a good case," Andrea said in her ear. "Even if this doesn't go the way we hope, today isn't the end – there's an appeals process for a reason, and Diego and I will fight to the end for you."

Maggie nodded wordlessly, her eyes for some reason fixed on the carpet – it had such a strange design of circles and stars, how had she never noticed it before?

"All rise," called the bailiff.

Maggie wobbled to her feet, and Diego squeezed her hand in his. " _Se fuerte_ [ _Stay strong_ ] _,_ Maggie," he murmured. " _No estás sola._ " [ _"You are not alone"._ ]

She took a deep breath and lifted her chin just as Judge Moore strode into the courtroom.  _Keep swinging, Maggie._

Judge Moore took his seat and they all sat down again. Maggie looked down, realized her fingers were shaking, and clasped her hands together. She was so focused on keeping her panic from showing on her face that she didn't realize the jury had walked in until Judge Moore said:

"Will the jury foreperson please stand?" Judge Moore's face was as calm as ever.

An African American woman in the front row of the jury got to her feet and wiped her palms on her trousers.

Judge Moore looked over. "Has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?"

"Yes, your honor."

No one said anything, but a crackle of energy sparked through the courtroom.

Judge Moore nodded to the court clerk, who walked to the jury box and took the sealed verdict from the forewoman. As the clerk brought the form over to Judge Moore, Maggie knew that every eye in the courtroom was fixated on that slip of paper.

Judge Moore took the paper, opened it, and read the form silently for what felt like hours, with the stone-wall expression that they were all used to by now. Maggie stared at his forehead. Someone coughed at the back of the courtroom and it sounded like a gunshot.

Finally, Judge Moore folded the paper and handed it back to the clerk, who took his seat. "Counsel rise," Moore said.

Diego and Andrea got to their feet, as did Mallory on the other side of the courtroom, and Maggie took one last look at Tony over her shoulder. His jaw was clenched tight and there was something like panic in his eyes as he looked back at her. Pepper's hand lay over his. Maggie's gaze flicked across her family – Tony, Pepper biting her lip, Rhodey with his hands fisted by his sides, Vision with his artificial eyes that expressed so much.

"Ms Stark," Judge Moore called. "Would you please stand and face the jury."

She had to place her palms on the defense table to push herself to her feet, because she didn't know if she had the strength to stand by herself. Her heartbeat pounded loud in her ears. She turned to the jury, her hands falling loose by her sides and her heart climbing into her throat, and made herself meet their eyes. They looked back and she was numb, too numb to read their faces. All she knew was that there were eyes on her and the most sickening sense of butterflies in her stomach.

"Mr Cowan?" prompted Judge Moore and all eyes turned to the clerk, his desk moored in the empty space between defense, prosecution, and judge. The clerk cleared his throat and looked down at the verdict form. Sweat glistened on his upper lip. The jury stared at Maggie.

When Mr Cowan spoke they all heard the nerves in his voice. "United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in the matter of the United States of America versus Margaret Abigail Stark, case number 17-cr-536 (BM)."

He cleared his throat again. "On Count 1, the first degree murder of Ursula Winslow, we the jury find the defendant Margaret Abigail Stark–"

 

– Maggie felt the world stop for a half breath and an eternity, her palms were sweating and her heart pounded against her chest and there wasn't a single thought in her head –

 

"– not guilty."

She heard nothing but  _breath_ and she realized that the courtroom had let out a collective gasp, or maybe a sigh, and all the air had left her lungs. Paper rustled.

"On Count 2, the first degree murder of William Poole, we the jury find the defendant Margaret Abigail Stark not guilty."

Maggie closed her eyes. Someone took her hand, sweaty and too-warm, she could feel eyes on her and heard people whispering and someone crying, but she kept her eyes closed.

The clerk read on, his voice still wobbly as he read charge after charge until the end of the form.

"Not guilty."

"Not guilty."

Not guilty.

 

* * *

 

New York Bulletin  
@newyorkbulletin   
BREAKING: MARGARET STARK CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES. 3:10 PM - 17 January 2017  10.2K  30.3K 

 

* * *

 

"Not guilty!" cried a spokesperson with a phone pressed to their ear in Times Square. The crowd burst into cheers.

 

* * *

 

Abby Gonzalez  
@gonzalezabby   
NOT GUILTY, NOT GUILTY, NOT GUILTY! This is a win for justice, I am so proud right now #wyverntrial 3:11 PM - 17 January 2017  341  785 

 

* * *

 

The neighbors of the Montreal safehouse were probably going to file a noise complaint.

 

* * *

 

"… Ladies and gentlemen of the jury is this your verdict so say you one, so say you all?"

As one, the jurors replied: "Yes."

Something exploded in Maggie's chest and flooded through her limbs – something warm that sang through her veins and nearly knocked off her feet. It made her open her eyes. She finally turned toward Tony and saw he was crying, tears running down his cheeks and collecting in his beard. Her heart stuttered. Then he caught her eye and  _smiled._ The smile crept up from the corners of his mouth until he was grinning at her, eyes shining, because she was his sister and she was  _not guilty not guilty not guilty._

Maggie's breath hitched and her eyes flickered – first to Pepper, who was – okay, Pepper was sobbing, which Maggie had never seen before – then to Rhodey, a grin on his face matching Tony's in its brightness, and Vision, whose eyes were closed as if he were meditating, or praying.

The warmth surging through Maggie swirled in her chest and  _glowed_ , and she didn't know what to do because this was how she felt when she was flying.

"Order in the court!" Judge Moore called. Maggie blinked and finally looked around at the rest of the courtroom – everyone was  _talking_ , staring mostly at her. Sound flooded back in and she suddenly registered just how loud it was. Her eyes widened and her heart pounded when a few people smiled at her with tears in their eyes. She turned, taking in the furiously whispering gallery and then the prosecution table, where Mallory stood grim-faced and staring straight ahead. She turned back to Judge Moore just as he regained order over the courtroom.

"Counsel, Ms Stark, please be seated."

Maggie fell back into her seat with Diego and Andrea by her side and realized that she was gripping Diego's hand probably far harder than was comfortable, and Andrea was  _grinning_ at her, wider than she'd ever seen.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," said Judge Moore, "we thank you today for your service in this trial, for your fortitude in withstanding the burdens of a case of this scale, and for the respect you have given the defendant and the law. You have discharged your duties with admirable dignity and diligence. With the thanks of this court, you are excused."

Then Judge Moore turned to  _her_. "Ms Stark, the jury has found you not guilty on all charges." His unreadable eyes turned warm. "You are free to go home."

 

When Judge Moore adjourned the court and left the room Maggie shot to her feet, hurdled the wooden barrier between the defense desk and the first row of the gallery then threw herself at her family. They caught her in a tangle of arms and tear-stained faces, laughing and patting her back, and someone pressed their lips to the crown of her head. Maggie shivered as she let their joy seep over her and through her, and for the first time a tentative smile broke out across her face.

When she finally extricated herself she turned to the beaming Diego and Andrea and pulled them in for a hug as well. She wrapped her arms around them and whispered "thank you."

"The work is easy when your client is innocent," Diego murmured as they pulled apart.

Maggie laughed breathlessly. "You call that easy?"

" _I_ call it the right result," Andrea interjected, still smiling wider than Maggie had ever seen. "The rest of your life belongs to you, Maggie."

The warmth surged within Maggie's chest and overflowed in a smile.

 

* * *

 

Tony held his sister as she basically lay on him, Pepper, Rhodey, and Vision, shaking like a leaf and her heartbeat pounding under his hand. Her face was buried in his shoulder but he was still dazzled at the way she'd looked when she turned around after everything was said and done: her eyes wide and her face utterly stunned, as if she'd expected anything but  _not guilty._

The courtroom was a roar of noise around them. Tony closed his eyes, still crying and unable to do anything to stop it, and held Maggie. He'd hoped for this with every fiber of his being, hoped like he had hoped to be free of that cave in Afghanistan, hoped like he had hoped for Maggie to come in from the cold and be his family again. He'd never really been one for  _hoping_ , but he supposed he had to thank the universe for this one coming true.

_Not guilty._

_Free_.

Pepper ran her hand along his face and he turned to her, vision swimming, to see her looking tearstained and stunned and impossibly happy. He kissed her and then kissed the top of Maggie's head, and felt Rhodey's hand on his shoulder and Vision's steady presence over his other shoulder. He looked up at Kemp and Martinez, who smiled down at the scene.

" _Thank you_ ," Tony croaked, already devising ways he could pay them extra for what they'd done here. They just smiled, and then turned away to give the hopelessly crying bunch a moment.

Maggie's fingers curled around Tony's sleeve.

He'd had his heart broken so many times over the tragedy that was Maggie's life. First when he'd heard news of her 'death' with his parents, then when he realized that she was alive and her life had been so much worse than death. And so many times after that.

Now, for the first time he allowed himself to hope that she had a future that was happy, and healthy, and free.

 

* * *

 

That afternoon Maggie walked out of the courthouse to a wall of noise. Shouting, applause, endless voices overlapping each other. An enormous sea of people filled the steps and the street beyond, colorful and loud.

Maggie looked out at New York City and realized that she was  _free_ ; free to go anywhere she wanted.

The thought gave her a headrush. She closed her eyes and savored the warm sunshine on her face.

"C'mon, Margarita," Tony murmured, and they got moving.

Happy had a car parked just beyond the police blockade a few hundred feet away, but Maggie didn't get two steps before the media swarmed them. Diego and Andrea stepped up, as they always did, but then someone called "Maggie, how do you feel?" and she took an unconscious step forward.

"You sure?" Andrea muttered.

She nodded and looked at the mass of journalists, TV cameras, and cellphones in front of her. Hush fell.

"You know what I realized just now, standing at the top of these stairs?" she said, as the people around her watched silently. She shook her head, almost in disbelief, and reached up to touch the pearl pendant resting between her collarbones. "I realized that for the first time in my life I'm a free woman. That's… honestly it's indescribable, that feeling. I want to thank the jury, the judge and the other members of the court, and the United States justice system. I promise I won't put the trust they placed in me to waste."

"Ms Stark, what are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to help people," she said immediately, then glanced at the people by her sides and behind her. She met Tony's eye and smiled at the look of undisguised pride on his face. She turned back. "And I'm going to be with my family."

With that, Diego and Andrea started hustling her down the steps again. They got stopped dozens of times along the way, and everyone in her entourage ended up giving mini-interviews to the press, but Maggie didn't hear much of it. She was still stuck on Andrea's words:  _the rest of your life belongs to you._

(Though she did hear Tony remark to one reporter: "Honestly, I think she's a lot better at this whole trial thing, given my track record I'd have to say she's by far the most dignified member of the family.")

As they drove off, Happy turned in his seat to say "I'm so happy, Maggie, I've been hoping they'd do the right thing and they sure did."

She had to yell at him to look at the road, because he almost hit a bike messenger, but once the bike messenger was safe she leaned forward to put a hand on his shoulder and said "thanks, Happy. That means a lot."

 

* * *

 

From: Shirley Kemp  
_Crying and cheering from my living room. Alarming my grandchildren. I'm so proud of you, Maggie._

To: Shirley Kemp  
_Thank you for all your support, Shirley x  
Andrea says that this sets a legal precedent of innocence for criminal acts committed by anyone subjected to the Memory Suppression Machine._

From: Shirley Kemp  
_*heart emoticon* I don't have words. Just know that you're very special to me.  
Bucky's lucky to have you._

From: Shirley Kemp  
_Link: 10 HRS OF WHALE SOUNDS FOR DEEP SLEEP & RELAXATION  
For when you need some sleep after a crazy day._

To: Shirley Kemp  
_People listen to whale sounds to get to sleep?_

 

* * *

 

That night at the facility the Avengers, Andrea, Diego, Maggie, and Pepper gathered in the common room to celebrate. Pepper had just managed to convince Tony not to throw an enormous party, which Maggie (who was overwrought, emotional, and constantly seconds away from laughing or crying) was very grateful for. It ended up being a calmer affair than Tony had planned for – after weeks of pain, stress, and anticipation, that night felt like a breath of relief rather than a riotous celebration.

Maggie was aware that what had happened today was monumental and world-changing, but she was too tired to consider the implications. So she gave out so many hugs that Tony started calling her Magnet, and buried herself in feeling thankful that she could spend tonight and the rest of her life with her family.

Outside the Avengers Facility, the world had only one name on its tongue.

 

* * *

 

January 18th, 2017

The next morning, Maggie woke up at dawn. For a long moment she just stared up at the ceiling of the cell that had become her room. Then she rolled out of bed, put on workout clothes, and left the room.

Maggie had explored the facility before, but only with other people. She'd spent so long as a prisoner that the concept of  _freedom_ seemed… like an illusion. Too good to be true.

She started to run.

 

After an hour of sprinting around the Facility, Maggie burst out from the tree line and came to a crunching halt on the gravel bank of the lake, her chest heaving and sweat dripping down her temples. Morning light glinted off the calm surface of the lake, and frost dusted the pebbles under her feet.

Maggie dropped her hands to her knees and just breathed, her eyes on the lake and her chest rising and falling.

"I'm free," she told the lake. In response a faint breeze drifted across the water and blew against her flushed skin, cooling her sweat and making her shiver. "I'm  _free_ ," she said again.

The words didn't ring true. The jury had found her innocent, sure, and Judge Moore had said  _you're free to go home._ But things weren't that simple. Ross and the Accords Committee had approached her yesterday (indirectly – Ross was still yet to visit the facility in person) and basically forced her to sign the Accords. There had been a large part of her that wanted to stubbornly refuse, but she was too afraid of what might happen to her – or to Tony – if she didn't. As she signed, every part of her prickled with the sense that this  _wasn't right._ She understood regulating people with immense destructive capacity, and understood signing in order to keep some control over the situation, but this… this felt like signing her freedom away.

So now she was constrained to a long list of legal stipulations about the use of her "enhancements", had a detailed file in the Accords Committee registry of enhanced people, and had the Committee watching her every move.

And that wasn't all – she was still chained by the trigger words. She could hardly forget – even now, alone on the lakefront, Maggie wore the four Manacles on various points across her body. She wanted them there, but the knowledge that her own mind kept her captive still hurt.

Maggie sighed and straightened, eyes still on the wide, flat lake. Blurry reflections of trees on the other side of the lake stretched across the water, their naked branches dusted with snow.

"What now," she whispered. She'd felt so  _confident_ when she answered that same question on the courthouse steps yesterday, but now she felt… cut loose. Adrift.

The trial was finished. HERACLES was still going strong, but Maggie's well of knowledge was starting to dry up. She'd told the world all of her dark secrets, and everything she knew was publicly available aside from some national security secrets, and some secrets pertaining to Bucky. Some people were still looking into remaining mysteries, but Maggie had put them in touch with professional investigators and offered all the help she could.

HYDRA was no longer an open wound. It was history.

So she was left with just one more thing to do to combat HYDRA's deadly influence. Maggie tapped a button on the Manacle on her right wrist.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"

"Yes, Ms Stark?" F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice emanated from the bracelet, sounding oddly tinny amongst the vast natural space.

"Did Pepper arrange that meeting for me today?"

"She did, for 10AM. Everything's in place as you requested, all that's left is for you to sign the documents and then the emails will go out."

"Great." Maggie sighed again. "I don't know what to do once this is over, F.R.I.D.A.Y."

"I think you've earned a break, Ms Stark," the A.I. replied. Maggie closed her eyes and felt the chilling breeze on her face. "Maybe you ought to take up a hobby."

Maggie laughed. "What, like… knitting? Scrapbooking?"

"Both are enriching pastimes beneficial for enhancing dexterity, memory improvement, and relaxation."

"I don't know if I know how to relax. I've gotta be  _doing_  something."

"A family trait, I believe."

Maggie laughed again. "Not the worst trait I inherited, but not the best. Alright, I'd better get dressed. Thanks F.R.I.D.A.Y."

"You're very welcome."

 

Tony was in the kitchen when she got back, so after he poked fun at her sweaty, flushed appearance they ate breakfast together. It felt so strange to just sit back and enjoy a meal with her brother, without the fear of being sent away hanging over her. Their mood was lighter, and Tony made several prison-themed jokes until she tossed a muffin at him.

He offered to come to her meeting in the city, but she kissed him on the cheek and told him she'd be alright. Vision was going with her for "security purposes" anyway.

As she climbed into the backseat of Happy's car in a suit and waved goodbye to Tony, Maggie wondered if this was what the rest of her life would look like.

Save for the absence of a certain long-haired former assassin and the fugitive members of Tony's team, she found she didn't mind it.

 

* * *

 

_Email from: HERACLESsurvivorsupport@gmail.com  
Subject: The HERACLES Survivor Support Fund_

_To Whom It May Concern,_

_You have received this email because you have applied for investigation, remuneration, or support due to HYDRA's impact on your life. In other words, you are a survivor of HYDRA. Whether HYDRA took away your loved one, or your livelihood, or impacted you in some other way, you are eligible for the HERACLES Survivor Support Fund._

_My name is Maggie Stark. I understand if you don't want to hear from me. But you may be aware of my work with HERACLES; spreading awareness and information about HYDRA's crimes. I feel I have one more task left to end HYDRA's influence, however._

_When I returned to my family, I realized I was legally entitled to an inheritance I'd long forgotten about: half of my father Howard Stark's wealth. I want to use that resource to do good, and I can think of no better way to do good than to support the others who have been hurt by HYDRA and lost loved ones because of them._

_If you do not wish to accept this money I understand, and I apologize for the inconvenience. I also apologize for the lateness of this offer – while on trial I couldn't legally offer monetary support to those who may have been witnesses. But I am offering now, as was my plan no matter the verdict. You may use this grant however you like: to rebuild your life in HYDRA's wake, to honor your loved ones, or to support children; it's up to you. I don't ask for anything in return for this money – not your forgiveness, or thanks, or to assuage my own guilt. The money is yours as reparation for the things you have suffered. I only wish there was more I could do._

_To apply for your support grant please respond to this email, or alternatively visit www.heraclessurvivorsupport.co_

_If you know of anyone who may be eligible for the support fund who may not have received this email, please make them aware of the website._

_With well-wishes for your health, happiness and future,_

_Maggie Stark._

 

* * *

'Victims of HYDRA Support Group' message board post:  _You guys. YOU GUYS! (link)_

 

"In breaking news this morning it appears that though Margaret Stark has been silent in the press she hasn't forgotten HYDRA's victims…"

 

"Ms Stark didn't put out a press release or attempt to use the fund to gain favor in the midst of worldwise discussion about the outcome of her trial…"

 

"– anonymous email recipient shared the text of the email with our station, and _–_ "

 

Wendy Daniels  
@wendyd   
How could I have forgotten that HYDRA took #maggiestark's family too? 2:36 PM - 18 January 2017  604  1287 

 

"The website makes it clear that, naturally, there will be a 1 week processing period for applicants to ensure that only genuine survivors of HYDRA receive money _–_ "

 

" _–_  appears Ms Stark intended for this to be quiet, as if anything she does now will go down quietly."

 

* * *

 

That afternoon Maggie sat with a steaming mug of hot chocolate on a chair in the courtyard of the Stark Mansion in Manhattan. The courtyard was actually located in the center of the house, a walled-off sanctuary open to the sky and filled with plants and creeping vines, centered around a bird feeder fountain. Maggie had loved this place when she was a little girl because it felt like a secret kept from the outside city, and because whenever she sat there she felt quiet and at peace. That same feeling fell over her now, even though winter made the courtyard cold and grey.

She tipped her head back and looked up at the white sky, streaked with clouds and shivering with the promise of snow. A flock of birds flashed overhead.

She was finished. Well, she'd never be  _finished_ with HERACLES, but it had taken on a life of its own now. It had staff, investigators, managers who ran it without needing her guidance. She didn't know where that left her.

As she watched the cold sky with her hands wrapped around a steaming mug, Maggie suddenly wished that she could get out and explore the world she'd never gotten to be a part of. Her heart pounded with the possibilities, but a second later she remembered that it was too dangerous.

She closed her eyes. She knew Vision was somewhere in the mansion, and if she hit a hidden button on any of her Manacles he would be out in an instant to knock her out or protect her. She knew she needed the security, but she hated it. She felt like a time bomb. Who knew how long it would be until someone attempted to use her words against her?

Suddenly, F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice emanated from her right Manacle: "Ms Stark, I have detected foreign technology in the sky above. I recommend alerting Vision and initiating defensive tactics–"

Maggie's eyes snapped open. For a split second she thought:  _bird_ , but then she realized that no bird had such a linear silhouette, and no bird  _glinted_ in the sunlight. Her eyes narrowed. The thing – drone – lowered and she made out red-plated wings, miniature glowing engines and the glassy eye of a camera. Her fingers tightened around her mug of hot chocolate and she gauged distances, angles–

"Ms Stark?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, her voice urgent.

"I…" something flashed red in Maggie's vision, and her eyes flicked to the courtyard pavement. Numbers and letters projected in red laser glowed on the ground at her feet:  _1500._ _40.7829° N, 73.9654° W._

A second later another laser projection joined the first:  _:-)_

" _Ms Stark_ –" F.R.I.D.A.Y said, and Maggie blinked.

"Ignore it, F.R.I.D.A.Y," she murmured. "False alarm."

The laser projection vanished, and she looked up just in time to see the drone fly away.

"Are you sure?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. asked.

Maggie checked the time on her Manacle's digital display.  _2:28PM._ The corner of her lips quirked up. "I'm positive."

 

It wasn't too difficult to sneak out of the mansion. First she disguised herself: makeup to change the angles of her face, hair stuffed into a beanie, and a hoodie, winter coat and scarf to hide in. Then she slipped out a back window of the mansion, scaled the wall of a nearby building and jumped rooftops until she was far enough from the mansion that she wouldn't be ambushed by the press. Tony or someone could probably track her using the Manacle if they got worried, but she'd set up a hidden backdoor to alert her if someone traced her.

As she leaped from one rooftop to another, the wind cold on her face and feeling lighter than air, Maggie considered that this could be a trap. But as she landed, she shrugged to herself and jumped onto a nearby fire escape. Even if it was a trap she could handle herself, and if she couldn't then the Manacles would prevent her from doing anything as the Wyvern, and would alert Vision to her presence if someone attacked her.

She slipped into the crowds on the pavement and headed for the coordinates.

 

* * *

 

Central Park, Manhattan

Maggie strolled down one of Central Park's main thoroughfares, her hands shoved into her pockets and her head ducked into her scarf to hide the lower half of her face. The light dusting of overnight snow had melted away, but a bitter cold still gripped the park. There wasn't much traffic, mostly shivering dog walkers or determined tourists.

She scanned the people around her for fifteen minutes until her eyes locked on a lone man sitting on one of the park benches, one foot kicked up on his other knee and an arm slung across the back of the chair. He wore jeans, a black leather jacket, a cap and sunglasses and was ostensibly scrolling through his phone, but Maggie could see from the tense line of his shoulders and the way his eyes were just a little  _too_ focused that he was concentrating on more than the phone. She broke out in a grin.

When she slipped up and dropped onto the bench beside him, Sam flinched and fumbled his phone.

"Hey, stranger," Maggie grinned.

Sam's eyes widened and darted over her, taking in her subtle disguise and glinting eyes, and then he grinned and pulled her in for a hug. He smelled like leather and cold, and Maggie squeezed him a little tighter than necessary.

When they pulled apart, Sam held her at arms length and smiled at her. "I see you got Redwing's message. It's good to see you out and free, Maggie."

She ducked her head. "Likewise." She looked up at him. "But Sam… please tell me why you're here. I know this isn't just a catch up."

Sam nodded, but his smile didn't fade. "Oh, I'm not going to beat around the bush. Maggie,  _they did it_." His eyes shone behind his sunglasses and Maggie's heart skipped a beat.

She swallowed thickly. "They did it?"

"They did it," he grinned. "They found a way to get rid of your trigger words once and for all."

Wind on her face. Breath in her lungs. Her heart pounding and her stomach swooping, soaring. Maggie slapped a hand across her mouth, doubled over and burst into tears.

Sam wasn't startled by her crying this time. He shuffled in closer to her, pressing his knee to hers, and put an arm around her shoulders. Maggie knew they were meant to be incognito but she couldn't help it because she'd been  _hoping_ and to have the words she hoped for come out of his mouth was almost too much to handle.

She sat up just far enough to look him in the eyes. "You mean it?" she gasped, tears still streaming down her cheeks. "You really mean it?"

He took off his sunglasses at met her eyes. "Yeah I do, Maggie," he said softly. "You're free."

Maggie sobbed and buried her face in her hands again. Sam rubbed her shoulder and uttered soothing nonsense words like  _it's gonna be okay_ and  _let it out._

As she sobbed on a cold bench in Central Park with a fugitive comforting her, Maggie's entire body thrummed with the knowledge of what this meant. For the past few months she'd been on edge, but this went back further – her trigger words had been with her for twenty five years. She barely remembered a time when they weren't hanging over her head and the thought of them  _gone_  was… it seemed impossible.

Maggie took in a deep breath and lifted her face out of her hands, just in time to see a passing tourist shoot them an alarmed glance. The tourist glanced between them – Maggie crying and Sam awkwardly patting her shoulder, then shot Maggie a commiserating glance and hurried on.

Maggie laughed wetly. "She thinks you just broke up with me."

Sam chuckled. "It's not you, it's me." He cocked his head. "One of these days I'm going to have a conversation with you where I don't make you cry."

She leaned back, letting out a long breath and wiping her face. "This seems too good to be true."

Sam squeezed her shoulder once more. "I think you deserve a little of that right now."

"So you caught the end of my trial then," she said wryly.

"Don't think there's a person in the world who could've missed it, to be honest," he replied with a smile. "I've been in New York for an hour and a half and I've already overheard seven separate conversations about it."

"Sorry," she muttered.

"Don't be, they were all glad you're free."

Maggie sniffed, and then turned so she was facing him properly. "Okay, so… trigger words. How?"

His eyes glinted. "Right." He rummaged in his jacket pocket and pulled out another metal bead, like the one he'd given her all those weeks ago but with a different symbol on it. "So this has all the information you need. Basically you need to build a machine. I don't know the science behind it, obviously, all I know is that the machine kinda looks like a cyborg helmet? Anyway, the person who made this is confident you'll be able to replicate it." Maggie took the bead from Sam and he showed her how to access the files on it – the bead was coded to her genetic imprint, so when she touched the symbol it glowed blue and projected a crystal-clear holographic image, kind of like the ones in Tony's workshop.

She eyed the plans for the machine. It kind of reminded her of B.A.R.F., Tony's therapeutic augmented reality device, but B.A.R.F. looked like dial-up internet compared to this. She could see genius in every line of it. Her heart simultaneously swelled and sunk as she perused the plans, and she sighed.

"Something wrong?" asked Sam.

"Not wrong, it's just… this would have taken me years to develop on my own, and I might never have gotten the idea in the first place. I'm just realizing how screwed I would have been without you guys."

He nudged her with an elbow. "You're a genius, Maggie. But there's nothing wrong with accepting a little help."

She smiled, then her eyes caught on something in the 'materials' section of the file. "What's this? ' _Kimoyo Vibranium Uplink_ '?"

"Oh, right. That means the bead. When the machine's finished you should just be able to put the bead in the housing part on the forehead, and then the bead uploads the program that teaches the machine how to get rid of the trigger words. I'm pretty sure that's how they explained it."

She arched an eyebrow. "So this is a Kimoyo bead, then. And it's made of Vibranium."

His eyes narrowed. "Yes, but you already knew that."

She shrugged, then turned back to the projection above the Kimoyo bead. "This also says I'll need another person to monitor the Kimoyo upload."

"Yeah… is that going to be a problem?"

Maggie bit her lip. "I don't think so." She tapped the bead's symbol once more and pocketed it. "I don't know how to thank you, Sam."

He grinned at her. "No thanks needed. I'm just glad we can help you get rid of those words for good." His grin flickered. "We heard about what happened at the facility on the weekend."

Her face twisted and she hunched her shoulders. She had another question, but she was almost too afraid to ask it. She took a breath, then said: "Have they cured Bucky's trigger words yet?"

Sam smiled as if he'd been waiting for her to ask. "They were just prepping him when I left to come here," he said. "We wanted to get these to you right away."

Maggie's heart skipped a beat. "He's not going to be very happy with me." Sam laughed and she glared at him. "Look after him, okay?"

"If I have to." At Maggie's sudden glare, Sam held up both hands. "I mean, yes, of course we will. Guy deserves a break too."

"Oh, wait a sec," Maggie rummaged in her pocket, then pulled out three slips of paper. "When you see Bucky, give him these?"

She handed over the papers, and Sam eyed them for a long moment. They were copies of the only images Maggie had to remember Bucky by: the photobooth strips, and the portrait Bucky had drawn of her. Sam's eyes flicked over the photographs, taking in Maggie and Bucky's beaming faces, the enormous orange teddy bear, and the image that showed only glimpses of their faces since they were too wrapped up in each other to notice the camera. Then he eyed the portrait of Maggie deep in concentration, with scratched safety goggles over her eyes.

"Huh," Sam eventually said. "I'd figured you two were a thing, but… at the time, I didn't know how to ask."

"I might've punched you if you did," she replied.

He waved the photos at her. "You sure you don't want to keep these?"

"Those're copies," she replied. "I've been carrying them around for a while."

Sam watched her face, eyes shrewd. "Must be hard without him," he eventually said.

Maggie sighed. "Well... I mean. Yes." She ran a hand over her face. "I really miss him. And I can't really talk about it with anyone other than Vision because…" She trailed off, and Sam's eyes softened.

"Right," he murmured, the word echoing with all the unspoken complications of the situation they found themselves in. "I can't imagine what that's like."

Maggie clenched her jaw, determined not to cry, and took a deep breath. "You'll make sure he gets the photos?"

"I'll make sure of it." His phone buzzed and he glanced down at it. "Now I've got to head off, I've already been here too long."

"That's okay," Maggie said with a sad smile. "I really appreciate you coming, though. Thank you."

He cocked his head at her. "You seem like you're doing okay here." He gestured at her bundled in her winter gear, leaning back against the park bench with the backdrop of Manhattan behind her.

She smiled. "Yeah, I… I never thought I could live like this, out in the open. But it's nice."

"If you ever need our help, just ask."

She cocked an eyebrow. "How?"

"Oh  _crap_  I almost forgot to tell you – that Kimoyo bead isn't just for the trigger word cure. If you touch the symbol and then twist, it'll come up with a communication function. It's text-based only, and messages might take a few hours to be transmitted for the purpose of secrecy, but it's a direct line to us." He paused. "There's someone on the other end who'll probably want to yell at you for willingly signing up for a trial."

Maggie rolled her eyes.  _No doubt Steve has been wanting to tell me in person how much stress I caused him._ "Thanks again, Sam. Stay safe out there in the world." She leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

"Back at you, Stark," he said with a grin. "We'll pass on any info about A.I.M. if we find it, and in the meantime… good luck with making the machine." He got to his feet and adjusted his sunglasses. "See you around."

"If you're lucky," she shot back, and waved as he strolled down the way she'd come. Once he was out of sight, Maggie leaned back against the park bench and exhaled a cloud of vapor. She pulled the Kimoyo bead out of her pocket and grinned at it, feeling the strange metal slide against the pads of her fingers.

She might not be free now. But she was about to be.

 

* * *

 

When Maggie burst into the mansion sitting room, Vision looked up from his book and blinked at the sight of her flushed cheeks and winter gear.

"Vision, got any plans?" she asked.

"No, why?"

She grinned at him. "You do now."

 

Once she'd explained, they went straight back to the Avengers facility and got to work. They occupied the workshop for the next few days, and when Tony tried to come in they had F.R.I.D.A.Y. turn him away. Maggie wished she could involve him, but it was best if he didn't know that Wakanda was helping her with this. She made sure he knew that she wasn't avoiding him though, and she stopped for mealtimes so he (and Pepper) wouldn't get worried.

The machine gave Maggie hope and a sense of purpose that soothed the aimlessness left after the trial. She and Vision chatted idly as they worked, marveling over the advanced designs, discussing their friends, and occasionally talking about Wanda. Vision was cagey about how often and where he met Wanda, but he didn't mind revealing that he'd seen her a few times during the trial. He related some of his confusions and wonders about being in a relationship ("Wanda is very soft" set her laughing so hard that she had to put down her tools), and fondly recounted stories and hopes Wanda had shared with him. And just like breathing, Maggie found herself telling Vision stories about Bucky.

She'd hardly dared think about him during the trial, too busy dreading her own future and scared that for the rest of her life Bucky would be locked in a frozen box. But he was going to wake up soon, or maybe he was already awake, and the thought sent a thrill down to her toes. So she told Vision funny stories from she and Bucky's two years together, the silly things they'd fought about, the time he he'd taken her to a university, the little girl who had called them elders, and even described the world-shifting moment that she had realized that Bucky Barnes was attractive.

As the machine began to take shape beneath their hands, Maggie couldn't help but look at it and associate it with love.

 

* * *

 

After three days of hard work they finally finished.

_It does look like a cyborg helmet_ , Maggie reflected. The curved metal base plate was intended to fit over the back of her head, and from that plate arced dozens of tiny, rigid wires that connected to points on the front half of her skull. A single strip of metal would smooth over the top of her head and come to rest on her forehead, with a circular hub for the Kimoyo bead. Lines of dormant circuitry adorned the base plate in a strangely beautiful pattern.

It looked  _weird_ , but it exactly matched the designs hidden in the Kimoyo bead.

Vision stood beside Maggie, looking down at the finished machine. "Does it have a name?"

"Didn't come with one," she replied. "I'm going to call it 'The Best Hat Ever'."

He laughed, but cut himself off when she lifted the machine, settled it over her head, and then sat cross-legged on the lab floor. "Maggie, I… are you sure? Don't you want to wait a moment?"

Maggie took a breath, getting used to the sensation of metal encasing her head. It didn't really feel like the Memory Suppression Chair, which she was grateful for. "I've had twenty five years of moments, Vis. Fire this bad boy up." She offered him the Kimoyo bead.

Looking disapproving in a way that reminded her strangely of Mr Jarvis, Vision knelt next to Maggie and gently pressed the bead into the housing on her forehead. Maggie tapped the bead, giving her genetic key, and Vision began programming the data upload.

"Try to relax," he said, and she took a deep breath. "It's not going to hurt, the designs were very clear about that."

"I know," she whispered as his fingers flickered just above her eye level. "I'm not scared of pain."

"What are you scared of?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm scared that without these words I… I might not…" his fingers fell still. "I might not be  _fixed_."

Vision's free hand cradled the side of her head, resting over the machine's metal plates. "Humans do not get fixed or broken," he told her. "They just  _are_. And you, Maggie Stark, are a singularly exceptional human. You deserve to be free of these words." He smiled down at her and the stone in his forehead glowed. "Are you ready?"

Maggie's hand drifted up to her head and she gripped Vision's hand.  _It's the mission_ , came a soft, low voice from the back of her mind, glowing with the memory of grey-blue eyes. She swallowed, took a deep breath, then on the exhale said: "Yes."

Vision's fingers flickered once more and then with a faint whir, the machine came to life. It felt like… humming, maybe, or like the fuzzy state between sleep and wakefulness. The machine didn't feel foreign, it just felt like an extension of her mind. Purple light illuminated Vision's face and his eyes widened.

"'S it working?" Maggie mumbled. One of Vision's hand was warm in hers and the other supported her head as she sagged backwards and…  _oh._ She was really sleepy. Vision said something that she didn't hear, and she felt herself get lowered to a smooth, comfortable floor. Her mind glowed.

Maggie's eyes drifted shut and she reflected that for the first time in a while she felt comfortable. And at peace.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'ALL, I COULDN'T SEND MY BABY TO JAIL!
> 
> I know a lot of important things happened in this chapter, but just know that I extensively researched the United States Federal Court case filing system to make sure Maggie's case number ~sounded~ accurate. I have learned a lot about the US court system through this process and it's been fascinating! Btw did you know that to access public case files on PACER (the public access to court electronic records) you have to pay money? It's like ten cents per page, but still – public access indeed. Anyway, that's info that no one needed.
> 
> Joy? Tears? Screaming? Let me know in a comment!


	71. Chapter 71

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a note at the end of this chapter about upcoming stories: please read and let me know what you think in a comment!
> 
> Lil warning for swearing in this chapter.

 "Hey, Tony."

The words filtered into Tony's state of concentration. He was working in the smaller workshop attached to the common room – he'd designed the space so he could work on projects while close to the team, but it didn't have all the fun toys that he had in the bigger lab, which  _someone_ had booted him out of for the past few days. Maggie had gone straight from the trial and into some project that she wouldn't let him see, so in the meantime he'd been working on tracking AIM with Rhodey, who was currently checking out a lead in Canada.

The words registered, and he looked up from his holographic display to see Maggie standing in the doorway. He blinked. She seemed better rested, somehow softer and calmer than she'd been these past few crazy days. She wore dark jeans and a soft red sweater, over which two pendants dangled: the white pearl he'd seen her wearing before (the one she'd fished out of the box in the acquisitions room), between her collarbones, and a slightly larger black metal bead an inch below that.

He straightened. "What's up, Maggot?"

"I need your help with something." She shifted, and he realized she held a slip of paper between two fingers.

"Sure. Is this to do with whatever you've been doing in secret with Vision?"

"It is. I need you to read these out for me." She slipped into the workshop, her footsteps somehow silent on the smooth floor, and handed him the paper.

He took it and glanced down, and the minute he saw the list of French words followed by ' _Wyvern?_ ' he scowled and crumpled the paper into a ball. "What the hell, Maggie, I'm not going to read these–"

"Please," she interrupted, her eyes serious. "Just do it."

"What, you... you want me to control you? Have you talked to Mai about this?"

"Trust me."

He gave her a long look. Something had changed in her face: maybe it was that she seemed less tired, or less afraid, or maybe some ever-present cloud of worry had dissipated. Whatever it was, he saw no doubt in her eyes. He frowned, then looked back down at the paper. His skin crawled as he recalled the words hissing through his hijacked facility speakers while he couldn't protect his sister from them.

After a long moment, he uncrumpled the paper and uttered: " _Verre_." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Maggie shiver, and he glanced up. She gestured for him to continue. " _Transmission. Affamé. Sept. Vieux._ " He paused to watch Maggie, because each word made his skin prickle and his gut churn. She just stared back at him.

With a shaky breath he continued: " _Sécurité. Trois. Tunnel. Digne_ ," he looked up at her, eyes pained, then finished: " _Quatre-vingts._ "

There was a long pause as the two of them just watched each other. Maggie's face was so, so blank.

The sick feeling in his gut twisted and grew. He didn't  _want_ this. He gritted his teeth and ground out the last word: "Wyvern?"

At that word, Maggie broke out in a brilliant, blinding grin that seemed to stop Tony's heart. Still grinning, she whispered: "Fuck you."

He dropped the paper. " _What?_ "

She just beamed wider. " _Fuck you_ ," she repeated. "Fuck  _verre,_ and fuck  _transmission,_ and fuck all those other French words because I'm a  _person_  and those words mean nothing to me now."

Tony could only stare at her, his eyes gleaming. He thought he'd seen all the complicated, wonderful parts of Maggie but he'd never seen this… this victorious archangel, shaking with adrenaline and her pupils shot wide as she faced him with her mind belonging to her and her alone.

He wasn't sure who moved first but one minute they were stuck frozen staring at each other, and the next they rushed together. Tony wrapped her in his arms with a desperate kind of relief. " _How_? How did you… what…?"

"Don't hurt yourself," she laughed, and wriggled out of his grasp just enough to look him in the eyes. "Science at its finest."

"Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack. I'm  _free,_ Tony. Finally."

His fingers tightened on her arms, just for a moment. "This changes… everything." Her eyes warmed and for a few more moments he just stared at her. It wasn't often he was caught speechless. "Well come on, let's get those Manacles off you!"

Her eyes widened. "You… you don't want to keep them on?"

"Why would I?" He turned to get his tools, missing the way her eyes welled with tears as she smiled at him. Instead, his mouth caught up with his brain and he started talking. "Okay, you've  _gotta_ let me throw a party this time. Actually screw that, let's go out partying! Let's hit the town Maggot; just you, me, Pepper, Vision, and Rhodey. We'll have a blast, and if any assholes come up and try to use your words on you we'll all beat the crap out of them."

He turned to see her grinning at him once more. "Sounds fun."

 

When they broke the news to Pepper and Rhodey, Pepper beamed speechlessly with tears in her eyes and Rhodey got so excited he forgot about his exosuit and almost fell over on his way to give Maggie a hug. Vision watched on proudly, his eyes glinting with the secret of her salvation.

Maggie joined them in their excitement and relished the feeling of being free of the words, free of the Manacle, free of everything except her own will.

 

* * *

 

January 22nd, 2017  
Wakanda

Flanked by two Dora Milaje, Shuri walked down a grassy hill towards a mud hut on the outskirts of a quiet village by the lake. It was peaceful here, with the morning sun glowing on the treetops and the lush grass. She walked past the hut and the goats in their pen, and strode towards the edge of the lake.

Sure enough, he was there. Sergeant Barnes ("Call me Bucky") sat on a rock on the bank of the lake, his left shoulder swathed in a blue cloth and his dark hair partially loose as he looked out at the glinting water. A flock of geese soared over the surface and wheeled up to the sky, and his head tilted back to track their flight.

When Shuri and the Dora Milaje grew close he got to his feet, dusted off his trousers and turned around.  _Good_ , Shuri thought. He seemed less jumpy today. His eyes remained just as sad as they'd been when he first woke up, though.

"Bucky," she greeted him with a smile, and nodded to the Dora Milaje. They took up guard positions higher on the hill. "How are you feeling?"

"Still good," he said, offering a small smile of his own. "You ask that question a lot."

"I think it's a fair question after I used an experimental device on your brain."

He shrugged his right shoulder. "Why are you here? Is something wrong? Is it about Meg?"

She smiled at him. She didn't think it was her place to tell him what his lady friend had been up to, but that hadn't stopped him from asking her every chance he got. "I can't visit my favorite white boy and his man bun?"

"You can," he said, the corners of his eyes wrinkling, "but you came here today for a reason."

"You are very perceptive. Yes, I came to tell you that your friends arrived in the city a little earlier from a mission, and they'd like to visit you."

"My friends?"

"The fugitive Avengers." She waggled her eyebrows at him. "Do you want to see them? If not, I can always tell them that I think you need more time to rest. Doctor's orders."

Bucky's eyes softened. "I'd like to see them."

 

Twenty minutes later, Bucky looked up from his seat beside the campfire near his hut to see four figures walking down the hill. He recognized Steve instantly, tall and broad and walking half a step faster than the others. He was flanked by a lithe, blonde woman (it took him a few moments to recognize her as Romanoff), Wilson, and the young woman whose name he thought was Maximoff. They'd changed out of their uniforms and into civvies but the leather jackets, jeans, and boots looked just as out of place amidst the Wakandan countryside. Bucky knew that T'Challa had warned them that such visits could not be a regular occurrence – Bucky needed to rest, and if anyone noticed their visits to Wakanda then the country would be in trouble.

As the four of them approached their eyes tracked across his new abode, taking in the mud hut, the goats, and his little fire. It didn't look like much, but it was peaceful. The air smelt clean, with the faintest tinge of wood smoke and hay.

When Steve got to the campfire Bucky stood up (still slightly off-balance, as he was getting used to the missing arm) and accepted his grinning friend into a one-armed hug. "Hey, punk."

"Jerk," Steve chuckled, and pounded him on the back. Bucky huffed in protest and pushed him off, then nodded to the others.

"Hey."

"Hey," Romanoff replied with a quirk of her lips. Wilson and Maximoff just nodded, but their greetings were a lot warmer than the ones they'd given in Germany last year. He'd seen them all briefly after waking up, but he'd been too groggy from the cryo-freeze to do much more than blearily greet them. Now that he had his brain more or less in order, he still didn't know what to say.

"You look well, Buck," Steve smiled. "It's good to see."

"Nice place, good people. Works wonders."

"The highly advanced medical technology doesn't hurt either," Romanoff added, and he gave her a sheepish smile.

Bucky eyed them all, then straightened. "It's good to see you and all, but… Meg?" his voice twisted up at the end, betraying the way his gut churned. "The Princess is being cagey about her."

Steve sighed. "Right. Um."

Bucky's eyes narrowed. "Steve."

Wilson rolled his eyes and cut in: "Your girl's been busy, Barnes. You might want to sit down."

They all relocated to Bucky's small campfire, taking their seats on logs and rocks. Bucky used the pause to eye their faces – they didn't look as if they were about to give him bad news, but they were obviously nervous. Steve's face was pinched in the way that meant he felt guilty, Romanoff was stoically blank-faced, Maximoff's eyes were fixed on Bucky as if reading him, and Wilson looked suspiciously compassionate.

"Okay, c'mon," Bucky said, once they were all seated. "Tell me."

Steve took a breath and visibly steeled himself. "Alright. The important thing to keep in mind, Buck, is that she's fine now – she's safe, she's free, she's with her family."

He frowned. "Free?"

Steve went right back to looking uncomfortable again.

" _Also_ ," Maximoff said, "we kept an eye on her the whole time. We would have stepped in if things went sideways." She hesitated. "More sideways."

" _What things._ "

Steve shifted on his log and scratched the back of his neck. "Well you know about Ross's press conference. Things quietened down after that, but then… Maggie, uh…"

"Chrissakes, Steve,  _what_?"

Romanoff had been watching with an arched eyebrow, but she apparently decided to put Steve out of his misery and take over. "She had a press conference of her own. Turns out she called it herself, hacked into Tony's systems and went behind his and the government's back. This is it." She produced a tablet from an inside pocket of her jacket and handed it over.

The still of the video showed Meg, and Bucky's face immediately went soft at the sight of her. She wore a dark red blouse and her hair was pinned up away from her face. She looked healthy, if not exactly happy – in the still her face was firm in a familiar expression of determination. A second later, Romanoff's words registered.  _Press conference? Meg, what the hell did you do?_

With a shaky finger, he hit play. "My name is Maggie Stark, and I'm here to put an end to twenty five years of silence."

Watching the press conference, his heart broke in a million different ways. There she stood, standing up for the right thing and the truth with such  _integrity,_ while he'd put himself on ice.

After her short speech she started taking questions, and Bucky was hit with a sudden rush of pride. His face darkened and lightened at each question and his heart pounded in his chest, fighting a battle between pride and panic. He could hear the hidden nerves in her voice, but she faced the shouting crowd with that same poised, passionate determination that he'd grown so used to when they were together.

At the end of the video Meg looked off-screen, then turned back to smile and say: "Sorry, I think that's all we have time for today." A second later men in dark blue uniforms seized her arms and marched her out of the briefing room.

He looked up, eyes suddenly cold. "What happened."

Romanoff cut Steve off before he could reply. "An hour after that press conference the US government charged her with thirty six murders in addition to terrorism, treason, and a whole other list of things. They threw the book at her."

Bucky physically felt the blood rush from his face, leaving him pale.

Steve leaned over to steady him. "It's okay, Buck, she got acquitted."

He took in a deep, shuddering breath and his eyes latched on Steve's face. "She did?" he asked, startled at how hoarse his voice had become.

"Yeah," Wilson piped up. "It was a hell of a thing. It got reported on pretty extensively so you can check it out if you want, but I've gotta warn you it got pretty ugly."  
Bucky's mind whirled with possibilities. "How… why…" he shook his head. "She's okay?"

"Yeah, Buck," Steve murmured. "She had a great defense team, and Tony was by her side the whole time. He, Rhodey, Vision, and Pepper were all character witnesses, and Maggie gave testimony as well. The jury acquitted her just last week because Maggie's team proved that she'd been controlled from the beginning and that she never wanted it."

"No shit," Bucky breathed. Wilson and Maximoff laughed.

Steve smiled. "And that's not even it–"

"Oh god." Of course it would be Meg who ended up giving him his first heart attack at 99 years old.

"No, no, it's good! She's… helping people." Steve glanced at the others, who all nodded in agreement. "She put her knowledge out there, giving answers to people affected by HYDRA. She made spreading the truth her damn mission. There's this website called HERACLES, it's incredible–"

"Don't forget about the relief fund," Maximoff chimed in, warming her hands by the fire.

"Right, she started a fund for victims of HYDRA–"

"And the prosthetic technology line," Wilson added.

"That too," Steve said with a small smile. "Nat put the most relevant points you missed on that tablet, Buck, why don't you have a look through instead of us talking your ear off."

Bucky rolled his eyes at Steve, but then started scrolling through the tablet. As he devoured the information the others around the campfire chatted idly, or got up to stretch their legs and check out his meager accommodation. Wilson started messing with his cooking pots, trying to make a cup of tea. Every now and then Bucky looked up to ask a question, and Romanoff usually answered.

Most of what he saw made his stomach sink and his heart ache: the dozens of prosecution witnesses, Vincent  _goddamn_ Silva and the Memory Suppression Machine (when he read the reports of Meg breaking down in court he had to stand up and do a few laps around the campfire, flexing his single hand). He saw parts that gave him hope, though: the character witnesses and doctors who stood up for her, Tony Stark saying ' _she's not a weapon any more. She's a person. She's my sister_.' He saw photos of Meg with her brother, and seeing them grinning side by side with an obvious bond between them made him fiercely proud.

His heart swelled as he read about Meg's testimony, even as guilt slammed him in the chest. He'd always known she was brave, but this… he couldn't imagine how hard it must have been for her. And he'd been  _asleep._

He read an article about the  _#IForgiveHer_ movement, and even though he still didn't really understand Twitter or the way news worked nowadays he understood enough to know that Meg had changed the goddamn world. Part of him was terrified – he'd been hoping that she was lying low and being safe, not… not making an international name for herself. But really, he wasn't all that surprised.

But then his eyes snagged on a line that  _did_ surprise him. "Steve," he said flatly, getting his friend's attention. "Am I reading this wrong or did Meg _get shot._ "

Steve paled, and on the other side of the fire Wilson choked on his tea. "Oh right, we forgot to tell you."

"How could you forget?" he demanded, his voice high.

Romanoff swooped in again, calm in the face of his panic. "She's fine. Now let me tell you about the people who shot her, and why."

Bucky listened with his hand in a fist as the former Widow calmly explained the origins and motives of a group called A.I.M., their mission of vengeance against Tony Stark, and their attack on the Avengers Facility. He'd thought the news of the trial had given him an unhealthy amount of panic, but hearing that Meg's words had been used against her sent him into an actual panic attack. Wilson and Steve sat on either side of him and helped him breathe through it, soothing him by simultaneously giving him useful calming tactics (Wilson) and frantically reassuring him that Meg was fine (Steve).

When he could breathe again and focus on more than the sickening sense that the world was falling apart, he gasped: "We have to stop them. A.I.M."

Romanoff's cool green eyes watched him across the campfire. "They've already mostly been stopped. The Avengers took out a decent chunk of their leadership and firepower after the attack, and they're actively hunting the remnants. If we get intel we'll pass it on, but the Avengers can handle A.I.M. Besides, Maggie should have gotten rid of her own trigger words by now."

Bucky closed his eyes. He wished he could just  _talk to her,_ hold her and look into her eyes and reassure himself that she was fine. Hearing about her like this, like a celebrity and a distant friend, twisted his heart up with worry. Steve and the others seemed sure that she was okay, but what had the trial really done to her? He knew she was a private person, what amount of pain could she hide from the world? He wondered how she felt about being free of her words.

"I gotta say, Barnes," came Wilson's voice, "You look more… overwhelmed, than surprised."

"I've always known Meg was one of a kind," he murmured, and opened his eyes. "All of this: putting herself on the line to make sure the truth gets out, helping people… it sounds exactly like her." He shook his head and ran a hand over his sweaty forehead. "It's not good for my blood pressure, but…" his mouth opened but no words came. He couldn't express quite how proud and in love with her he was. The others seemed to know what he meant, though, because Steve clapped him on the shoulder and the others smiled. Maximoff's eyes warmed and she cocked her head at him, as if she understood how he felt.

Sam sighed. "Honestly, when Steve told me he'd promised to look out for Maggie for you I was like 'cool, we'll keep an eye on the facility and offer her an out if she needs it'. I wasn't expecting a freaking season of Law and Order and suddenly having to worry about international intrigues and disguises and her standing up in front of the whole freaking world."

Bucky smiled. "She doesn't do anything by halves. So where is she now?"

"Still at the Facility," Romanoff said. "She lives there and occasionally at the Stark Mansion in Manhattan. She's mostly been working on HERACLES and the Survivor Support Fund from what we can tell, but she's been busy with getting rid of the trigger words the last few days. After that, who knows?" Something glinted in her green eyes. "We also gave her a way to get in touch with us, so…" she flowed to her feet and paced toward him, hand outstretched. Bucky glanced down at her palm to see a single Kimoyo bead on a chain. He'd seen Shuri and the other Wakandans use these, but they wore a bunch of them in a bracelet, not on a pendant like this. He looked up with a knitted brow.

"This is a direct line to Maggie," Romanoff said. Bucky's stomach plummeted and he reached for the bead. "But before you use it, Sam and I promised to pass along a message." Halfway through swiping the bead out of her hand, Bucky looked up again.

Wilson cleared his throat. "She said her mission isn't over."

Bucky's heart pounded.  _Meg._ He glanced back down at the Kimoyo bead.

"And," Wilson continued, eyes glinting when he saw the irritated frown on Bucky's face, "She said to pass these along." He stood up, circled the campfire, and then placed three pieces of paper on top of the bead in Bucky's hand. Bucky's eyes flicked down, and –  _Meg._ Meg frowning, Meg smiling with his lips on her cheek, Meg grinning in that brilliant way he'd become addicted to, Meg focused on something out of sight. He'd nearly forgotten she still had these photos. His heart twisted inside his chest, and he closed his eyes at the ache.

"All good, Barnes?" Sam asked from a safer distance, and Bucky nodded once.

"'M fine," he said, though all evidence spoke to the contrary.  _Direct line to Maggie_ , Romanoff had said. He opened his eyes and carefully set the photos on his knee - he'd find a safe place for them soon. Then he turned his attention back to the Kimoyo bead, rolling it over in his fingers before taking a deep breath, touching the symbol, and twisting. The symbol glowed purple and then projected a short holographic message into thin air:

_Thanks for the cure guys, I owe you a lot. Sam said to make contact here and someone would yell at me. Can't wait._

Bucky suddenly went misty eyed – everything he'd heard about her so far had seemed so distanced, as if he was hearing a story. Even the pictures were years old. But these were words that Meg had written recently and sent – seemingly unknowingly – to  _him._ He noticed the others turning around respectfully, so he hunched his shoulders and figured out how to send a reply.

 

* * *

 

Upstate New York Airspace

Maggie was 30,000 feet in the air when she felt the Kimoyo bead activate under her flight suit, growing slightly warmer and vibrating against her ribcage. Her heart skipped, but a second later her thoughts turned back to the wide blue sky and curving earth outside the fighter jet cockpit.

"How're you feeling, Maggie?" called Rhodey through the comms, and she leaned slightly so she could see the back of his head in the pilot's seat.

"Freaking amazing!" she called back, grinning at the sun on her face and the g-forces pushing her back in her seat. She peered over Rhodey's shoulder. "Though you should re-calibrate the INS to get a better idea of your acceleration."

"Are you seriously back-seat driving me right now? In a fighter jet? You're worse than Tony."

"Well I  _do_ know how to fly this model of jet fighter."

At Rhodey's disgruntled huff she laughed into her helmet mic and closed her eyes. She let the rush of air over the jet wings and the roar of engines wash over her. The sun beat warm on her face, even through her helmet visor. "Thank you for this, Rhodey."

"Hey, I promised you I'd take you flying."

"Twenty six years ago," she reminded him.

"I keep my promises, no matter how old they are."

"Still," she murmured. "Thank you."

"Thank me later," he said. "For now I'm going to try my hardest to make you throw up in that helmet." With that he pulled the jet into a sharp twist and the world outside blurred into lines of brown and blue, earth and sky.

Maggie let out a whoop which turned into a breathless laugh when he pivoted into a dive. "Challenge accepted!"

 

* * *

 

On the ground again at the Air Force base, Maggie jumped down from the cockpit – ignoring the stairs – and pulled off her helmet, still laughing breathlessly. Rhodey scowled at her as he negotiated the stairs with his exosuit.

"Is motion sickness a thing for you? Like at  _all_?"

"Doesn't look like it!" she said brightly. Her fingers strayed to her chest.

"Alright, weirdo." He got to the bottom of the steps and grunted when she threw her arms around him.

"Thank you, Rhodey."

"You're welcome," he smiled, then pulled away. "Now I've gotta go explain to the base commander why I just broke a bunch of airspace rules." He pulled his helmet off and strode back to the hangar.

"Use the Avenger card!" she called after him. He waved her off.

Once he was out of sight Maggie turned around, fumbled her Kimoyo bead pendant out of her flight suit and activated it.

A single holographic message blinked into existence:  _Sam's an idiot. Hey, doll_.

Maggie's stomach dropped and so did her legs, sending her crashing to the tarmac on her knees.

Her hand flew to her mouth even as she let out a half-laugh, half-sob, and her fingers shook so badly that the message blinked out. Gasping, laughing, she gripped the bead and activated it once more. She took in the words hungrily through her blurred vision, her mind resounding with the last word:  _doll._ She gasped when more words joined the first line:

 _So I woke up a couple days ago, and I just heard about what you've been up to while I was out. Meg, I don't know what to say besides that I'm_ _**so** _ _proud of you, and I'm so sorry I couldn't be there. How are you?  
PS: My mission isn't over either._

She burst out laughing again, helpless to the emotions charging through her body, and turned her face to the sky.

" _Bucky_ ," she breathed, and a part of her that had been hollow and alone burst back to life, glowing and overflowing with love.  _Thank you, thank you, thank you_. She pressed the Kimoyo bead to her tear-stained lips.

For a long moment she stayed like that, on her knees on the tarmac beside a parked fighter jet, her eyes closed and crying with her face turned to the sky. The wind blew on her face and for the first time she felt finally,  _finally_ , as if things might be alright.

 

* * *

 

_You're KIDDING ME._

_Hello, handsome!_

_I don't really know what to say either Bucky, but here goes: 1) I am so excited that you're out and free 2) you're an ASSHOLE for going under cryo again 3) I love you so, so much 4) We have so much to catch up on! 5) I love you 6) trial sucked, I'm kinda famous now, still figuring that out 7) I hope you're managing to reconnect with Steve, wherever you are 8) I love you. Again. 9) it's really good to hear "Meg" again._

_I can't think of what else to say because my mind is a bit of a mess right now but write back soon! How are you? You got rid of your trigger words, right? How is your arm?_

_Love,  
_ _Maggie_

 

* * *

 

For the next few days Maggie joined the Avengers in their hunt for A.I.M. – she didn't go on any of the scouting missions, because the Accords Committee would never allow it (they actually didn't know she was involved at all, let alone that she knew about A.I.M.). But she did help them trawl through terabytes of data including CCTV footage, police reports, geographical projections, and captured communications.

And every few hours she dashed out of the Avengers operation room when she got a Kimoyo message. It turned out the message transmission got delayed by a few hours due to the security programming, so over the course of days she and Bucky got reacquainted. It was strange only being able to exchange messages (letters, really) when before they'd been around each other all the time, but each new message made Maggie's heart leap and swell after the months of silence. She got a few weird looks for dashing out of brainstorming sessions at the drop of a hat, but no one ever questioned her.

At first Bucky was cagey about his location until she told him that she'd figured that out weeks ago, and then they freely exchanged details about their new lives – Bucky described his small home by the lake in startlingly poetic detail, and Maggie told him about her much larger home by a lake, and the people in it. He was pleased she'd formed such a close bond with her brother, and said he wished he could meet her other friends. In return he told her about the young, brilliant, empathetic Shuri, and the strange and beautiful country he'd found himself in.

They wrote to each other about how it felt to be free of the trigger words. Neither of them could really believe it was  _real_ , and when Bucky admitted to murmuring his words at night, just to make sure, Maggie wrote him back in a rush of relief to say that she'd been doing the same.

For a brief, crazy moment, they considered running away together once more. But even as Maggie suggested the idea she knew she couldn't leave Tony. Bucky responded:

_You've got no idea how much I want that, doll, but I don't know if we'll be able to meet. Like you said, that asshole Ross and the Accords Committee are watching you closely, and getting into Wakanda is difficult anyhow._

Curled up in a non-surveilled corner of the facility, Maggie touched the holographic words. He needed to stay in Wakanda for now – the world wasn't safe for him, even with her acquittal to protect him from the things he'd done with HYDRA. She'd be putting Bucky in danger just by being with him - she was too public a figure, now. Besides, he needed to rest.

 _I know, and I'm sorry,_ she replied.  _This isn't forever though. We'll see each other again._

Message sent, she went back to tracing A.I.M. They were getting closer, they'd tracked the remaining stronghold of the group to somewhere around Canada or Alaska. Maggie had sort of inherited her own desk in the operations room because the analysts were annoyed that she kept borrowing their equipment, so she worked back and forth between the desk and the central hub of the operations room, discussing new leads with Tony and the others.

Two hours later, the Kimoyo bead pulsed against her breastbone. She ducked out and headed for the bathroom.

_Doll, I wouldn't blame you if you… y'know, wanted to move on. You have a life, a family. I wouldn't blame you._

Maggie had made the mistake of opening the message while shutting the stall door behind her, and on reading the message she accidentally closed the door so hard that the top hinge snapped. She ignored it. She yanked the lock closed and sat down hard on the closed toilet seat, staring at the message. Her heart pounded. Was this because she'd told him how much she liked her life at the Avengers Facility? She thought she'd made it clear to him that her mission wasn't over, that she missed him every day and wished they could be together. Could it be because she'd talked about Vision so much? But surely he understood that they were friends, and Vision was with Wanda anyway? Or could it be that…

She chewed her lip for ten minutes, staring at the glowing purple letters in the air before her, then growled and typed out a message.

_Is that your way of telling me that you'd like to move on? Because if that's what you want Bucky, truly, then I'll… I guess I'll live with it. I'll be mad as hell, but if that's your choice then I'll accept it. So is that what you want?_

She sent it off and then stormed out of the bathroom to hunt down A.I.M.

At the stormy look on her face the analysts left her alone, but Tony noticed and came over.

"What's up, Magma? You look like someone spat in your coffee."

"'M fine," she replied, not taking her eyes off the highway camera feeds she was monitoring. "Just really hate A.I.M."

He cocked his head, but let it go. "Me too, Mags, me too."

By the time the next Kimoyo message arrived Maggie was fuming, abusing her keyboard with violent strokes and ending any attempt at conversation with a curt "I'm busy". When the bead pulsed under her blouse she shot to her feet, stormed out of the room and returned to the bathroom stall with the broken door. This time she waited until she'd sat down to look at the message.

_That's not what I meant, Meg. I don't think I could ever get over you that quickly – I don't want to. But I'm just saying that you're in a different place from me right now. I'd understand._

With an explosive sigh, Maggie tapped out a reply.

 

* * *

 

Six thousand miles away and two hours later, Bucky felt his Kimoyo bead hum against his chest. He dropped the bale of dried grass he was hauling to the small village and reached with fumbling hands for his bead.

Purple words glowed before his eyes:  _Shut the hell up, Bucky Barnes. You're so stupid._

He let out an involuntary laugh and closed his eyes for a moment. He could tell she was angry but he'd had to check, to make sure: he didn't want Meg to feel like she was bound to him. She deserved freedom in all things, especially in who she chose to love.

Thankfully, impossibly, she still chose him.

Grinning at the bead, he wrote his reply:  _Yes, ma'am._

 

* * *

 

A day later they were back to writing as usual. It turned out Bucky was a wonderful writer, thanks to his practice writing letters back home and in the war. They couldn't save the messages, so Maggie memorized the long, beautiful letters he wrote her telling her how much he loved and missed her, and what they'd do when they were together again. She read them curled up in her bed, the glowing purple words so close but still intangible.

Bucky read her replies on his cot in Wakanda, smiling at her self-conscious attempts to become a good letter writer, and laughed at the stories she told about her day and the funny things she'd heard or done. He asked about HERACLES, and started supplying his own memories to supplement the archive. They had to be careful so it wasn't obvious that the information came from him, so he usually ended up giving Maggie a lead that she researched then uploaded to HERACLES with fully sourced evidence. He also asked about the prosthetics line and other technology she was contemplating.

_You've always been capable of doing great things. I'm glad that now you get the chance to do it._

They teased each other, shared jokes, and exchanged recommendations for books they'd read and movies they'd seen since they last saw each other. They wrote about the future, which was something that neither of them had ever dared to hope for before.

 

Early on, Maggie wrote:  _So, getting drunk as a skunk at the tender age of fourteen and making a mess of your mother's couch. That's a classy move, Barnes._

He wrote back:  _How in the hell did you find out about that._

Biting her lip, she wrote out a reply.  _In retrospect this wasn't the greatest way to tell you, but through all the business with the trial I ended up getting in touch with Shirley. She's doing really well, Bucky. She's still living at home, she plays bingo twice a week with her friends, and I think she might have the strongest set of lungs I've ever heard (last week she yelled at some boys trying to steal a bike on the other side of the street). One of her granddaughters was my lawyer! That's how we met.  
She misses you, obviously, but I told her you were doing well and that you remember your family, and she's glad. She's really funny. And smart, and she makes great brownies. This week we've been exchanging embarrassing stories about you._

Bucky wrote back overflowing with questions and emotion, and eventually Maggie told him to write a letter to Shirley. She memorised his response word for word, and passed it on. Shirley sobbed when Maggie read Bucky's letter to her, but when it was over she pulled Maggie in for a hug.

"I know you risked a lot to get this to me, sweetheart," Shirley said. "I won't tell a soul.  _Thank you_."

So as Maggie and Bucky got slowly reacquainted, through Maggie the two siblings began to talk for the first time in seventy four years.

 

* * *

 

January 29th, 2017  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"So if we infer that this financial transaction is A.I.M. funding the gas heating for their base–"

"–and that cipher you broke points to their base being by a river–"

"–yes, then we can pinpoint their base to somewhere in this seventy square mile area on the Kenai peninsula."

Tony and Maggie stopped talking over each other and grinned, as a glowing map of Alaska hovered between them. They'd been working for nearly ten straight hours, so close to finding A.I.M. that they could practically smell scared scientists.

Maggie rested her palm over the hologram. "That's a small enough area to search by hand. Even if the base is underground we should have them by the end of the night."

Tony nodded and stroked his beard. "Yeah, but we know that this is one of their most defensible bases – we might have found them, but we'll still have to formulate a  
foolproof attack plan."

Maggie waved a hand. "I can help you with that. I lived in bases like this my whole life, I know how to take them down."

Rhodey, who had been watching the siblings finish each other's sentences with his arms folded across his chest and a smile playing at his mouth, let out a  _hmm_ sound. Maggie looked over at him.

"What's up?"

He shrugged, then gestured between he two of them. "Do you guys remember that morning after Tony's 21st birthday party, in the kitchenette?"

She smiled. "With the orange juice?"

Tony made a sour face at the memory of his hangover.

"Yeah," Rhodey replied. "I remember thinking then that you two were going to be a force to be reckoned with." He glanced between the two of them standing tall in the center of the Avengers Operations Room, their eyes gleaming with success. "I was right."

The words softened the edges of Maggie's determination, and she smiled at Rhodey. For a long moment they all just looked at each other. Tony softened for a moment as well, but he blustered through it by waving a hand and saying:

"God, Rhodey, you're such a drama queen."

Rhodey chuckled. "Sue me."

"Don't tempt me," Tony shot back. "Okay, so we should send a message to Vision to get him back from wherever he is–"

"Seriously, where does he go on those soul-searching trips?" Rhodey wondered aloud.

Maggie, who was fully aware that Vision was currently in a French safehouse with Wanda, kept very quiet.

Suddenly an analyst who sat a few stations in front of Maggie approached the central hub. "Excuse me, Mr Stark?"

"What's up, old sport?"

Maggie shot a questioning look at Rhodey and he murmured: "it's a reference to a book that Tony really shouldn't be aligning himself with. You probably haven't read it. I'll explain later."

The analyst either didn't hear or pretended to ignore the nickname. "We've just received a transmission." He waved a hand at the hub holographic display and it shifted into a short segment of text. "It's from A.I.M."

Maggie tensed and her hands balled into fists as she read the message:

_A.I.M. is willing to negotiate a surrender._

_Mr Stark, come to our facility alone in three hours. If we detect anyone other than Mr Stark approaching, we will unleash lethal countermeasures. If you do not arrive in three hours, there will be repercussions._

_Send Mr Stark to our facility, alone, in three hours. This is your only hope for a peaceful arrangement._

The message was followed by coordinates in the Kenai peninsula.

Rhodey and Tony immediately started discussing the message, but Maggie kept silent as she stared at the words.

_Yeah, that's not gonna happen._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies! This is another cliffhanger, I know (sorry not sorry), and BUCKY'S BACK (!!!!) but I wanted to ask you guys a question. This story is now on the home stretch to Infinity War, and after the events of that movie The Wyvern will be going on hiatus (because I have no clue what the MCU has next, so, no real way to plan). BUT – this isn't the end! I have three ideas for what to work on next, and I wanted to ask you guys what you'd be most interested in reading:
> 
> 1) A Wyvern AU of one-shots. In this AU all the Avengers (plus Maggie and Bucky) live together in the compound and work as a team (after all the MCU movies are said and done – everyone is alive, because I'm a sap). This would be a chance for me to explore relationships and life events that I just couldn't work into The Wyvern.  
> Sneak peek: Maggie meeting Thor & Loki and the ensuing shenanigans. Tony & Pepper's wedding. Tony & Bucky's complicated relationship. Maggie meets Daredevil! A Fuck You, HYDRA party part 2 with all the Avengers. A new Stark Expo headed by both Stark siblings, with Bucky and Steve in attendance. Maggie and Bucky appointing themselves as Steve's wingmen and trying to set him up (with Nat's help). Maggie making friends with Natasha, Wanda, Steve, and others. And many other one shot ideas including ones about certain life events that I won't bore you with now ;) (title pending).
> 
> 2) Another Wyvern AU. In this AU Maggie was in the car crash with her parents, but the Winter Soldier disobeyed orders and didn't kidnap her. Maggie grows up with her brother, disabled by the crash and haunted by memories of a metal-armed man that no one believes. Growing up in the public eye Maggie becomes her own person and then, as she grows dissatisfied with the state of the world, she becomes a hero. The Wyvern isn't a HYDRA assassin but a shadow in the intelligence world, a bounty hunter whose identity is unknown. And Tony doesn't know where his sister keeps disappearing to.  
> This AU will involve Maggie in MCU movies she wasn't in before (such as the Iron Man movies and the first Avengers movie), and will diverge from canon pretty significantly in a way that The Wyvern didn't. (Title pending: currently working with "Shadow of Your Wings")
> 
> 3) The Siren. This is a non-Wyvern story (the horror!) beginning in pre-WWII New York. You guessed it, it's a Steve/OC story! Alice is a young European (probably Austrian) immigrant whose widowed mother married an African-American man when they moved to 1930s Brooklyn. Alice goes to school with Steve and they become fast friends, bonding over their innate instinct to protect people (however, Steve faces problems head-on and fists-first, but Alice is a little more subtle and tricky). But years later Alice's parents die and a malicious uncle takes her back to Austria, where she becomes an internationally renowned singer. After years of covert letter-writing she and Steve meet again in Brooklyn in the early years of World War II, and hit it off. But Steve is about to go to war, and Alice is about to make the SSR an offer they can't refuse: her services as an undercover agent within the very heart of Nazi Germany. Steve becomes Captain America and Alice becomes the Siren, a bewitching songstress who performs for the German elite, including Johann Schmidt himself. (this story will continue on into the twenty first century).
> 
> I'll probably write them all at some point, but which do you guys want to read first?


	72. Chapter 72

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies, thank you all so much for your votes! At the moment it seems option #1 (the one shots) are the most popular choice, and writing those will give me some time & space to plan out the longer works. So that will be coming up right after this story.
> 
> There's some fanart by the lovely Travelilah at the end of this chapter!

 The analysts in the operations room watched on as Tony and Rhodey argued about A.I.M.'s ultimatum.

"You can't go alone Tony, this is the most obvious trap in the history of traps–"

"I know  _that,_ Rhodey, but this might be our best option! A.I.M. was smart enough to break into this facility, and we don't know what tech they've managed to develop while they've been in hiding. I'll go in the armor, obviously, and at least this way I'll get a chance to do some recon on the base before you hit it–"

"Or they'll just shoot you out of the sky the second they see you," Rhodey said, throwing his hands up. "They haven't been shy about trying to kill you in the past! Besides, you  _know_ you have to run this by the Accords Committee."

"Ross and the others will back this, they've basically given us permission to take down A.I.M. as soon as we find them anyway."

"At least wait for Vision," Rhodey urged, "he just messaged back and said he could get there in five hours."

"A.I.M. said three hours, and even though they stole the dialogue from a B-movie supervillain I'm not super excited to see what 'repercussions' means."

Rhodey turned to Maggie. "You gonna back me up here?"

She looked away from the message and turned to her brother. "Rhodey's right, Tony. You're being stupid. Is there any way we can convince you not to do this?"

Tony shrugged at them. "Probably not."

She nodded. "Fine." With that, she turned on her heel and headed for the door.

"Wha– Maggie, don't leave, c'mon–" Tony called after her, but she opened the door with a wave of her hand and walked out.

 

* * *

 

Maggie had the vague outline of a plan, and as she walked around the facility collecting supplies the plan grew ever more solid. She first visited the med bay, then her room, then went to the workshop. Then she had a very tense discussion with F.R.I.D.A.Y.

That done, she slipped into the high-security section of the facility hangar (technically only Avengers had access to this area, but she'd managed to convince F.R.I.D.A.Y. to let her in) and looked around at the room. It looked like most change rooms in the world, to be honest, though far more high tech. She climbed into a locker that she thought must have once belonged to the Black Widow, if the remnant smell of leather and gunpowder was anything to go by.

In the dark, her ears straining, Maggie slipped her Kimoyo bead out of the black skin-tight shirt she'd changed into and sent a message to Bucky:  _BRB, about to go do something stupid._ The message faded away as it sent, and she was left in the dark with the glowing afterimage of the words.

 

Three minutes later, she heard the high-security changing room's door open.

When she'd been the Wyvern, none of her targets had ever heard her coming until it was too late. It appeared that was a skill she still had.

Tony didn't hear her when she unlatched the locker door from the inside, or when she slipped out and padded across the floor toward him. He was busy talking at F.R.I.D.A.Y., arranging flight lines and weapons arrays and satellite monitoring, his hands waving the air in front of him as he walked. He probably didn't realize she was there at all, because it only took half a second for her to close the distance between them, stick the syringe full of high-quality sedative into his neck and press the plunger. It took another half second for the sedative to take effect.

She caught Tony as he crumpled bonelessly, then dragged him into the adjoining shower room. Once he was laid out on the tile floor she fetched the soft blanket she'd brought with her and wrapped him up so he wouldn't get too cold. Then she put her hands on her hips and looked down at him. He looked relaxed – the frown lines in his brow had smoothed out, and his mouth was slightly ajar. She crouched down and rolled him onto his side so he wouldn't choke on his own drool.

"Sorry," she muttered to him, and tucked the blanket in more securely. "But you were being really stupid."

"Ms Stark," F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted, her voice echoing in the shower room, "I'll monitor the Boss's vitals, but he should be out for the next few hours. You need to get moving."

"Right." Maggie got to her feet and hurried back into the changing room. "We're good to go?"

"Confirmed."

She took a breath and turned to Tony's changing station – it was marked by a full-length dressing-room mirror with light bulbs all around it that she was pretty sure he had put there as a joke, and a single metal pedestal with a palm scanner. Maggie approached, and eyed herself in the obnoxious mirror. She looked dark and serious in the black combat clothes she'd put on, her eyes pinched with guilt.

Tony had programmed all his armored suits to accept Maggie's genetic signature in case he needed to protect her in an emergency. She loved him for it, but that hadn't stopped her from using the backdoor to do some sneaky coding (with F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help) to make herself the primary pilot.

"Ms Stark–" F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, but Maggie waved a hand.

"I know, the time pressure. Okay, let's do this." With another breath to steel herself, she slapped her hand onto the palm scanner.

Immediately the pedestal came to life with a mechanical whir, and the palm scanner glowed gold. Half a second later metal slid over Maggie's hand and up her arm, cool and smooth. She resisted the urge to pull away and forced herself to breathe as the metal consumed her body like ice, and when she felt it encase her neck and slide over her face she screwed her eyes shut.

There was a brief moment of panic as she thought  _I can't breathe, I'm dying_. She was encased in metal like a tomb, strangled by it, but then – she opened her eyes. She was greeted by an explosion of light through the HUD, and after a few seconds of confusion she began to see, to understand, and she realized that the metal around her was  _alive_ and primed to her every command. A thrill went through her.

With a shaky laugh, Maggie stumbled back a step –  _clank-clank_ , came her footsteps – and turned to look at herself in the mirror.

" _Hell yeah_ ," she breathed. Iron Man stood before her, the familiar gold and scarlet plating slipping away to scarlet and chrome in the lower half of the body. Slitted, glowing eyes looked back at her.  _Mark 47_ , read a note on the HUD, above a list of specifications and blueprint arrays. Maggie's eyes flicked over some of the details:  _unibeam, mini-missiles, lasers, EMPs, grappling chains._ She grinned, and flexed her fingers. In the mirror, Iron Man's gauntlets flexed into fists and then back again. She more or less fit into the armor – luckily this version of the armor had some stretch capacity, or she would have been too tall for it.

"This is awesome."

"Ms  _Stark_ , there are two hours and twenty minutes left until the deadline." F.R.I.D.A.Y. sounded both disapproving and despairing, and Maggie's grin vanished. She'd only managed to talk the A.I. into this plan by explaining the extreme danger Tony faced if he went alone, and how Maggie was the best one suited for the job. Luckily for her, F.R.I.D.A.Y. had agreed. And she was aware that the A.I. could boot her out of the armor at any time, so she straightened and said:

"Right, sorry F.R.I.D.A.Y. Let's work out how to fly this thing."

Above her head, the ceiling slid back to reveal a narrow flight chute opening up directly to the sky. Maggie sighed and cocked her head. "This seemed a lot easier while I was planning it."

"Fortune favors the bold," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied, with an air of impatience.

Maggie rolled her shoulders back, feeling the armor roll with her, then fired up the repulsors. It was intuitive, based more in thought than in movements of the head gear and gauntlets. She felt power ripple through the armor, noted the ongoing power feedback on her HUD, then kicked the repulsors into flight mode.

She shot off the changing room floor in a blast of light and sound, zipped through the flight chute and then burst into open sky. She gasped as the facility fell away beneath her and wind rushed over her helmet. A second later the white clouds broke apart around her and she soared up, arcing away from the facility and the world below.

A whoop bubbled up her throat and out her mouth. This was  _fast._ Her wings were fast but they couldn't move like this, cutting through wind and sky like a freaking missile. Maggie spread her arms and spun in the air, just because she could, laughing despite A.I.M. and despite her unconscious brother because  _this_ was what she'd been missing: just her, metal, and the sky. It felt slightly strange to be flying encased entirely in metal – she was used to feeling the wind rushing over her body and the minute sensory data from her wings, but the sensation of soaring through the air still felt wonderful.

The armor faltered and dipped in the sky, and Maggie refocused her efforts on piloting.  _Right. Flying unfamiliar tech on a dangerous mission. Focus, Stark._  She aligned her body to what she hoped was the way the armor usually flew, then fixed A.I.M.'s location into the HUD flight trajectory system.

A.I.M. had said  _send Mr Stark to our facility, alone, in three hours._

Well they weren't going to get Mr Stark. But they'd get Iron Man.

 

* * *

 

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

The final A.I.M. base was set into the side of a rocky, snow-laden mountain. It was barely visible from the air, aside from a few metal hatches and pipes. The most obvious sign was the large metal door to the flight hangar. The base overlooked a choppy river that rushed through a dense forest toward a steep waterfall a few miles south. Initial scans showed that it was well armored and reinforced, capable of withstanding immense firepower.

When the base's scanners sensed Iron Man approaching, a single metal hatch opened.

Iron Man plunged through the opening and landed with a metallic  _clang_ , one knee to the floor with repulsors whining and slitted eyes glowing. Slowly, precisely, the armor straightened and its eyes lifted to survey the room.

It was a wide, functional space with high ceilings and heavy-duty wiring snaking across the floor, brightly lit and gleaming like any science lab should be. The far end of the room was occupied by a tall chrome dish, similar to a satellite dish but not pointed at the sky. More importantly, the room was packed with A.I.M. agents. They'd all lifted their weapons to point at Iron Man when he entered, their faces hidden by dark masks with rectangular visors. They wore heavy duty tactical gear, but unlike the agents who'd attacked the facility these ones wore their allegiance proudly – the A.I.M. logo (a yellow globe/target design) was emblazoned on their chests. They stared at Iron Man, and he stared back.

"So predictable," came a voice over the intercom. It was low, menacing. Maggie recognized that voice – it had called out her trigger words over the facility speakers just a few weeks ago. "The great ego of Tony Stark. Even when you know it's a trap you walk right in, confident that you're smarter than everyone else on the planet. But not today, Mr Stark. You may be smarter than any other individual on the planet, but A.I.M… A.I.M. is a collective."

The large dish on the other side of the room whirred into life, glowing electric blue as it powered up. It swiveled to lock on to the armor's signature. The low whine of throbbing electricity pulsed and swelled until it filled the air like a heartbeat, and–

With a clunky  _krrrr_ sound, the dish's lights flickered and went out, and it drooped to point at the floor. The agents in the room shifted their feet and traded glances.

For a few seconds, there was nothing but silence. Then a new voice came over the base speakers.

"Aw, is the machine you specially designed to shut down the Iron Man armor not working?" Maggie tutted. "That's a shame, you should call tech support."

And then the lights went out.

 

On the other side of the facility from the Iron Man armor Maggie shut the door of the control room for the advanced EMP, leaving the trussed-up technicians behind her. In the darkness she was near-invisible thanks to her dark combat gear, soundless footsteps, and the black mask fitted to the lower half of her face underneath a pair of HUD-equipped goggles. She blended into the darkness, feeling skills she learned long ago slip to the forefront of her mind. That might have scared her once, but now she knew she was free of her words and free of HYDRA. This was all  _her._

In the corridor outside the control room, she paused and glanced around. Her HUD showed a team of seven agents already rushing toward her position, so she slipped toward several thick pipes running down the side of the corridor and hid behind them.

The leader ran past her a few seconds later, murmuring "approaching the control room now" into his comms.  _So they haven't figured out that F.R.I.D.A.Y. cut out base-wide communications yet._

When the last agent ran past her position, Maggie struck. She stepped into the corridor, raised her wrist-mounted energy blaster and took down the two agents at the back before they knew what hit them. The others, disoriented by the bright white bolts of energy, spun and started firing. Maggie dodged their instinctive spray of bullets and slid between the next two agents on her knees. She blasted the larger one in the face, knocking him into the wall, and the other one rammed his rifle butt at her head. She whipped around just in time to catch it and shove it back up at him. The rifle crunched into the agent's chin and he crumpled like a sack of potatoes.

The last three agents recovered and fanned out as they fired, the bullets sparking off the metal floor and ricocheting around the corridor. But Maggie was already moving again. She rolled under their bullets and into their space – she swept an agent's legs out from under him, flipped to her feet and sprang across the corridor to slam her elbow into the next one's temple. The leader's gun swung up to fire at her but in three quick steps she knocked his aim sideways, slammed her foot into his knee and fired an energy bolt into his face on his way down.

Shoulders tense, Maggie waited half a second to make sure the seven men were unconscious. When she was satisfied she spun on her heel and strode back the way the agents had come from.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y., how're you going?"

"The welcome party has been dismissed," the A.I. replied. Maggie tapped the side of her goggles, momentarily checking the comms relay from the Iron Man armor – sure enough, the agents who had previously been pointing their weapons at Iron Man were now unconscious or immobilized on the lab floor.

"Nice work."

Iron Man started moving again as F.R.I.D.A.Y. sought out new targets. "Naturally. However, I don't understand why you requested that I make such a dramatic entrance minutes after you had already infiltrated the base."

Maggie slipped around a bend in a corridor and set about clearing each room. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had already knocked out their comms and taken over the base security, and Maggie had disabled all escape routes and vehicles, so everyone was trapped inside. All that was left was to flush them out. She had identified a highly reinforced room near the apex of the base on the scans – no doubt where the last leaders of A.I.M. were hiding.

"Well," she explained to the A.I., "They were expecting Tony, right? They were expecting the big, dramatic entrance, so we had to give it to them to maintain the element of surprise."

"All the same," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied, "they would have been surprised by your infiltration with or without the armor's entrance."

Maggie shrugged to herself as she tossed a sleeping gas grenade into a lab full of scientists and then locked the door. "That's true. But it was kinda fun, wasn't it? And don't say you're not programmed to have fun, because you'll just make me depressed."

"Well we wouldn't want that."

 

* * *

 

A.I.M. didn't have a chance. They'd been expecting Tony Stark, had been studying his thought and combat patterns. They weren't ready for the efficiency and calculation of F.R.I.D.A.Y. controlling the Iron Man armor, or the Wyvern slipping through the shadows and blasting them with a blinding bolt of light before they knew what was happening. A.I.M. had started as a scientific group, and this new iteration had learned most of their military tactics from HYDRA. Unfortunately for them, Maggie knew those tactics inside and out.

Maggie hadn't fought like this in years. Maybe not ever. She and F.R.I.D.A.Y. worked on opposite sides of the base, working clockwise and non-lethally neutralizing each scientist, technician, and agent they found. Maggie got used to the energy cannon, working with it as an extension of her arm like the heel spurs were just extensions of her legs, and used moves and tactics that she'd half forgotten in the past few years of relative peace. She didn't have her wings to back her up so she relied on the strength of her limbs and the speed of her attacks, switching from stealth to aggression in a heartbeat. The most any agent saw of her was a flash of black-clad limbs and a blinding bolt of light before they lost all sense.

Once Maggie finished working her way through a team of agents hiding out in an armory, she straightened and tapped her goggles. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., status update?"

"My scans indicate that a significant portion of A.I.M.'s troops have concentrated in the flight hangar. They have managed to barricade themselves in."

"Huh. I'm about to hit that reinforced room, so once I'm done there I'll come down and help you out."

"Be careful."

"Back at you."

"I am programmed to be careful. You, however–"

"Oh,  _please_."

 

It took her a few minutes to break into the reinforced room. In the end it was suspiciously easy – she hesitated when the door swung open, calculating the possibility that whoever was inside had let her in.

Eventually, she gritted her teeth and slipped inside. She found herself in a wide two-levelled space, the upper level looking down onto the foyer below. Maggie's eyes darted around as she tried to identify the room's function – if she had to guess, it served as a lab, control room, surveillance hub, and war room all at once. And it was  _too quiet._ Desks, machinery and computers filled the space and harsh fluorescent lights shone down on Maggie's cautious face. She spotted a blueprint of Avengers Facility on the far side of the first floor.

She heard rustling and glanced up at the second floor landing. Instantly she tensed and flinched back at the sight of fifteen agents pointing their weapons down at her, but then a voice broke through the stifling tension:

"Just a moment!"

Maggie froze. She  _knew_ that voice. It was the same one that had read her words one cold and terrifying morning at Avengers Facility, the same that had said  _Wyvern. Kill Tony Stark._

Her eyes narrowed and her head swiveled until she found him.

The man stood at the edge of the second floor landing, his fingers curled around the metal railing as he peered down at her with pale blue eyes. She remembered him from his file:  _Alan Crowe. Disgraced scientist turned rebel leader of A.I.M. Charged with domestic violence and divorced after losing his job, then dropped off the grid._  He had an intense look about him: dark hair clashed with his pale eyes and fair skin, with a laser focus to his gaze as he stared down at her.

"I never thought it'd be  _you_ ," he said, almost wonderingly. His voice was low and the sound of it sent chills of ghost-panic running down Maggie's spine. Her face was still disguised by the mask and goggles, but she supposed it wasn't that hard to figure out who she was.

Crowe's face twisted, the side of his mouth curling up as he said: " _Verre_."

Maggie had already been frozen on the stark metal grating of the base headquarters, but at that word her every muscle went rigid.

Crowe smiled at her, and his fingers flexed around the railing. " _Transmission_."

She shivered. She couldn't help it, her gut churned at the words and at the gleam in his eyes that she recognized, because she'd seen that gleam in the eyes of so many HYDRA generals, who knew that she was  _theirs_ –

" _Affamé_."

The agents in the room just watched, their weapons loosely trained on her. Maggie's skin crawled – she needed to  _move_ , to flee or to fight, but she forced herself to remain still and silent as Crowe read her words. It was a good thing he couldn't see her face, because it was twisted into a grimace that was half snarl, half sneer, and her eyes watered. She waited him out, even though each word tugged at decades of fear in her gut. But they had no more grip over her mind.

When he reached the last word, his face etched with the knowledge that he'd won, he called: "Wyvern?"

Maggie straightened, and her hands fell to her sides. She tilted her head, and her eyes bored into Crowe's even though he couldn't see hers through her goggles.

After a tense, eternal moment, she replied.

"Fuck you."

She savored the way his eyes shot wide and his mouth fell open, then tossed the concussive blast grenade she'd slipped off her belt into the air. It detonated perfectly in line with the second floor, a halo of light and energy that exploded outwards and knocked Crowe and all the agents to the ground.

Maggie didn't bother with the stairs. She leaped up, seized the edge of the second floor landing and hauled herself over the railing. In a single turn of her head she identified the agents still conscious, and used the next few seconds to dart around and take them out with her energy blaster. Then she descended on Alan Crowe.

He was still awake, pinching his bleeding nose as he groaned on the floor, and when he saw her stalking toward him through the dusty air he gasped and tried to slide away from her. She reached him half a second later and planted a foot on his chest, towering over him. From the way his eyes darted toward her foot and dilated in fear, she guessed he knew about the heel spurs.

She pushed her goggles up her forehead so he could see her eyes. "I've never met you before," she said in a low, even voice. "Why did you use me like that?"

His pale face twisted into something like a sneer. "It's not  _about_ you," he grunted. "Your brother–"

"My brother what?" she interrupted, cocking her head and slightly increasing pressure on his chest. "Put a stop to a terrorist plot to murder the president and take control of the United States? My brother killed a deranged, manipulative lunatic? My brother shut down a group dedicated to unethical human experimentation?"

Crowe spat blood directly onto her boot. "You're just as egotistical and blind as him."

"I'm not the one who built a secret science lair on the side of a mountain, asshole." She crouched down, leaning more of her weight on his ribcage, and seized his ear. He yelped and tried to pull away, but each movement only twisted his ear further. "But you still haven't answered my question. You could have tried to kill Tony in plenty of other ways.  _Why. Me._ "

His eyes narrowed. "Because we  _could_. You were a weapon prime for the taking." He stared right into her eyes, as if waiting for his words to elicit the violence he expected. But Maggie could see that he hadn't told the whole truth. She twisted his ear. "Agh! And… and we knew that if he died, you would take his place – just another Stark, inflicting your self-righteousness on the world. If you killed him it would have… it would have put an end to the  _Stark legacy_ once and for all." His eyes darkened.

For a few tense moments they just stared at each other, Maggie bearing down on Crowe like an avenging angel.

His eyes glinted. "Are you going to kill me now? If you don't, I'll tell the Accords Committee what you did here. I doubt they'd be very happy with you breaking their rules."

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't care what you do. And  _I_  doubt anyone will be much inclined to believe anything you say after you tried to kill my brother and discredit me."

Crowe sneered. "Sure. Go on then, kill me. I know you want to."

Maggie just gripped his ear, staring hard at him. She hardly knew this man, he was just another in a long line of people who had used her. Her anger and hatred thundered through her veins.

He started to shake under her.

After a long moment, Maggie's grip tightened. "I am not what you think I am," she murmured, then let go of his ear to shift her wrist and fire her energy blaster into his face at point blank range. His head thudded to the floor and he went boneless under her.

Maggie stood up, dusted her hands off and pulled her goggles back over her eyes. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., you still clearing up the dregs?"

"The 'dregs' have mobilized two tanks and are successfully keeping me out of the flight hanger."

"Aw, are you asking for my help?"

"If you're not too busy," F.R.I.D.A.Y. snarked back.

"On my way, dear."

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes later Maggie was back in the armor, clearing up the remainder of the armed resistance in the locked flight hangar. She'd more or less got the hang of fighting in the armor, though it was more restrictive than she was used to. At least the gadgets were fun.

She'd just pried open the hatch of one of the tanks and fired Tony's experimental knockout gas into the cockpit when an explosion erupted above her.

Debris rained down and she instinctively ducked her head, then swiveled and aimed her repulsors upwards. Part of the ceiling had fallen in and cold sunlight streamed through the hole, until–

"Dammit," Maggie muttered, and dropped her hands. War Machine dropped through the hole in the ceiling, landed with a clang on the hanger floor and then fired a missile at the last tank. It flipped backwards and exploded in a plume of orange fire.

Finally the hangar fell still. Well, apart from the crackling ruins of the tanks, the general chaos, and the two heavily armored suits whirring as their occupants got to their feet. War Machine eyed the burning tank, then turned and laid red glowing eyes on Iron Man.

"What the hell, Tony!" Rhodey called, throwing his arms wide. His black and chrome armor glinted in the firelight. "I told you not to go into the  _obvious_ trap without me!"  
Maggie hesitated, then stammered: "Um…"

Of course, the voice came out different. Rhodey froze, then cocked his head.

"Tony?"

She winced. "No?" She shifted her feet awkwardly in the armor – trust Rhodey to turn her from efficient A.I.M.-taking-down-machine to embarrassed teenager.

Rhodey clapped a hand against his face with a clang. " _Maggie_?"

"Shh! Some of these guys might be awake!"

"Everyone in the building besides yourself and Colonel Rhodes is unconscious, Ms Stark," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said helpfully.

Rhodey dropped his hand. "What's happening? Where's Tony? Did he… did he help you do this?"

She slid the faceplate down and smiled sheepishly at him. "Um, no. He's probably going to be unconscious for another few hours."  
Rhodey slid down his own faceplate, stared at her for a few seconds, then put his hands on his hips and swore a blue streak. Maggie's eyebrows shot up. She'd never heard him use that kind of language. She kinda loved it.

When he was done, Rhodey turned to frown at her. "Look, I'll do the clean up here, Vision's only a few minutes away anyway. You need to get back to the facility right away. You're breaking the Accords, Maggie–"

"I know that! But Tony was going to walk into this trap all hot-headed and stupid, I had to do something!"

"Okay," Rhodey said, holding up a hand. He glanced around at the charred and smoking hangar. "But now you've got to go back. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"Good. Is there anything I should know before you leave? Are you hurt? Any hostiles left?"

Maggie shook her head. "Nope. I'm fine, and this should be the last of them. F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"

"Assessment confirmed," F.R.I.D.A.Y. told both of them.

Rhodey cocked an eyebrow. "Alright then. Get going, Maggie. Make sure no one sees you."

She grinned at him. "Yes, sir." With a sloppy salute she flipped down her faceplate, fired up the suit repulsors and rocketed out of the building.

 

* * *

 

From: Bucky  
_Wait, what are you going to do? What does BRB mean?_

_Maggie?_

_I asked Shuri and she said BRB means 'be right back' – Maggie, after everything you've been up to recently I am seriously concerned about your classification of 'stupid'._

_So apparently Iron Man just took down the last A.I.M. base. I don't know how, but you had something to do with it, didn't you?_

 

From: Maggie  
_Sorry to make you worry, handsome. And that's classified._

 

From: Bucky  
_I'm too old for this shit._  
_Well done, doll._

 

* * *

 

Tony woke up on one of the mustard yellow couches in the Avengers common room. His eyes snapped open and he winced at the bright sunlight, then glanced around at his surroundings. He lay horizontal on the couch, his limbs ensconced in a soft tartan blanket and his head propped up on a pillow. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and looked over to see Maggie flicking through holographic blueprints – looked like B.A.R.F., if he wasn't mistaken.

And he might be. He had a  _splitting_ headache.

"What the hell," he mumbled.

Maggie looked over and her face brightened. "Oh good, you're awake! Here, have some water."

"What the…" he looked around, bleary and confused, and took the offered glass of water with fumbling fingers. "Uh, what?"

Maggie patted his forehead as he sipped the water. He squinted at her, and she kept her face blank as pieces clicked together in Tony's mind.

He frowned. "Did you sedate me?"

"I did, yes." Her face remained blank.

He glared at her. "You… wait,  _A.I.M._ –" he lurched upright, spilling his water, but Maggie put a firm hand on his chest and pushed him down again.

"Don't worry about A.I.M."

His eyes went wide and he scrutinized her face: she looked calm, but that could mean anything. "What did you do?"

She shrugged innocently. " _I_  didn't do anything. Iron Man found A.I.M., kicked their asses, and now they're in prison. Good job."

Tony pinched his nose as his headache throbbed. "How… what…" his eyes widened again, and he turned to her. " _Maggie,_ you didn't–"

She shrugged.

"Why did you do that?"

"Because you were going to get yourself killed."

"So you… you what, you drugged me, stole my suit and impersonated me?"

For the first time, her eyes gleamed. "I did, yes."

He dropped his head back against the pillow and flicked his eyes over her. "Are you hurt?"

"Not a scratch. Well my chest is kinda sore, since there's no boob room in that armor–"

"I didn't need to know that." He sighed, and pinched his nose. "Alright, tell me about it."

 

* * *

 

The Accords Committee required the Avengers to give a debriefing report after each mission, so Tony and the others went to do that while Maggie waited in the common room with Pepper. She'd told them everything they needed to know to give an accurate report of the base takedown, but she was feeling a little guilty about making them lie.

Pepper sensed her anxiety and invited her to do a face mask, so when the Avengers returned to the common room they were met with two women in bright green tea-tree-scented masks.

"How did it go?" Maggie asked, swiping up a face washer to get the stuff off her face. Tony snorted at the sight of her covered in green paste, and they sat on the available couches.

Rhodey spoke first. "Well luckily for you, the approval to run a mission against A.I.M. came twenty minutes before you hit the base," he said, with arched eyebrows. This was the first time Maggie and Rhodey had seen each other since their encounter in Alaska. "Of course the approval was for  _us_ , but it sounds like the Committee isn't aware that it wasn't Tony in the armor."

Maggie smiled sheepishly. "So Crowe didn't say anything?"

Vision leaned forward. "He's been taken to the Raft and questioned by their investigators, so we don't know what – if anything – he has said. But the Committee gave no sign that they knew anything about you being involved, so either Crowe didn't say anything or they didn't believe him."

Maggie glanced at Tony. He didn't look particularly reassured, but he didn't say anything so she didn't either. "Huh," she said. "Alright then, so that's… that's it then, I guess?"

Rhodey arched his eyebrows again. "You guess? You don't think we should have a talk about how you sedated Tony and stole his armor to go face a whole bunch of bad guys by yourself?"

Maggie pressed her lips together. "Well just in the interests of total fairness, I do want to point out that I'm not the only one in this room who's stolen Tony's armor when he was being stupid."

Tony and Rhodey both narrowed their eyes at her, but she kept her face open and innocent.

Pepper cleared her throat. "Maggie, I think the issue is that they're worried you'll do it again."

"Oh." Maggie eyed the Avengers' faces – Tony and Rhodey were tense as they watched her, and Vision's brow was heavy. They did look worried. "Well, I… I can't promise that I won't step in if I see something I don't like going down" – Tony's brown knitted and she hurriedly moved on – "But this is your job, I'm going to leave you to it. I kinda want to take a break from situations with potentially world-changing repercussions for a while, believe it or not."

"You seem to have a habit for attracting them," Vision pointed out.

"Well I can't exactly help that," she said with a shrug. "And for what it's worth guys, I am sorry about going behind your back on this." She bit her lip. "I just… I guess I'm not used to working on a team. My reaction to A.I.M. threatening Tony was to handle it quickly and quietly, by myself. Sorry."

That finally got Tony and Rhodey to stop looking at her like she was some vigilante teenager who would run off at a moment's notice. They sighed, shared a glance, and then turned back to her.

"It's alright," Tony said. "Though if you sedate me again I will…" he trailed off, eyes darting.

Maggie cocked her head. "Are you trying to think of a way to threaten me?"

"Yes, but for the life of me I can't think of anything."

"Hard to threaten someone who just took down a base of over a hundred A.I.M. and HYDRA agents by herself," Rhodey added.

"I didn't do it by myself," Maggie protested. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. did half the work."

The others rolled their eyes, and Maggie smiled at them. She could tell that something had changed in the way they regarded her: they'd all seen her fight and had all fought her at some point or another, but today they'd been reminded that Maggie didn't need to be in full Wyvern mode to be very, very dangerous. They looked at her out of the corner of their eyes when they thought she didn't notice, but not out of fear. It looked a lot like  _respect._

Something had changed in Maggie, too. She'd always been constantly aware of the threat she posed, but now that her words were gone it felt different. Like there was a power in her that was  _hers._ It still scared her a little – such power could be easily misused, and she wasn't sure if she was the best judge for when to use it, but it reminded her of when she saved Miguel or when she and Bucky stopped those bank robbers. It felt like she had the capacity to do good _._

Pepper, still at ease in her green face mask, seemed to sense some of Maggie's thoughts. She leaned across the couch, laid a hand on Maggie's forearm and smiled at her.

Rhodey sighed. "Alright. So… trial's over, A.I.M.'s gone, what now?"

Tony shrugged. "Back to the grind, I guess. Mags, you haven't really talked about your plans – what do you think you're going to do next? The world's your oyster."

With everyone looking at her again, Maggie swallowed. "I… am going to see what it's like to be a person. I'm going to explore, try new things… figure out what to do with myself." She chewed her lip. "I was thinking about developing some projects in the workshop – I really want to work on B.A.R.F., for example. I recently got some ideas to bring it into the future." Vision sat up a little straighter, and Maggie avoided his gaze.

Tony spread his hands. "Workshop's all yours, and I'm always down to tinker."

Pepper cocked her head. "Trying new things is an excellent goal – would you like to go to the Met with me? Maybe MoMA?"

"And I'm still working on expanding your movie repertoire," Rhodey chimed in with a grin. "Now we can go to theaters!"

Everyone naturally turned to Vision, who seemed thoughtful. "I would like to explore New York City. Perhaps we can do that together, in disguises."

Maggie clasped her hands together and grinned at the group around her. " _Yes._ To all of that. I know the Accords Committee's still keeping an eye on me but this is the first time in my life I've been really, honestly free. I'm going to make the most of it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following art is all by the wonderful Travelilah, I'm blown away that you enjoy this story enough to make art inspired by it!  
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> Come hang out on Tumblr for more! I'm princesszorldo over there, and I'm planning on making more moodboards :)


	73. Chapter 73

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Endgame and Captain Marvel teasers!!! I am excited and scared!!

 

February, 2017

As it turned out, being a person meant suddenly having a whole lot of free time and endless options for what to do with it. For a few days Maggie mostly hung around the facility catching up on sleep, exploring the forest and lake, sending messages to Bucky, and watching a lot of Netflix. Peter kept dropping around the facility for suit updates and sometimes to give reports (he'd also enthusiastically congratulated her on the outcome of the trial, and informed her that everyone at his school thought it was "awesome" except "Flash, but he's always wrong". Maggie decided not to feel too cut up about a kid who went by the name  _Flash_ ). Maggie ended up giving Peter a few more training sessions. The kid was a quick learner.

Then her boredom hit critical levels, and she headed to the workshop. Tony had been in there the last few days working on one of his own projects, so when she strolled in in pajamas and her hair up in a scrunchie, he merely nodded then went back to his screen. Maggie rolled up to a workbench, patted Dum-E, and got to work.

 

She started with B.A.R.F., the overpriced and difficult-to-use technology Tony had developed to revisit traumatic memories and formulate better endings for them. The tech from Wakanda worked along similar but far more advanced lines, and Maggie wasn't above doing some creative  _borrowing._ So she read up extensively on neurology and therapy, and tinkered with the B.A.R.F. programming and blueprints; her goal was to reduce the expense, combine it with Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy, and make it easier to produce.

When Vision came in on day three and asked what she was doing, she explained that she aimed to make a tool that could become normal in the therapist's office, just like doctors' offices had thermometers and blood pressure measurement machines. She collaborated with Mai, who understood enough of the theory to help her out with the complicated brain stuff, and who put her in touch with notable neurologists and therapists. The experts were fascinated by the redesign, simultaneously ecstatic that technology could be used to better their field, and surprised that it was coming from Maggie Stark of all people.

Getting involved in neurology freaked Maggie out a bit, as occasionally she found herself flashing back to a time when it was her own mind that was being pulled apart like a machine. But she used that fear to program hundreds of safeguards into B.A.R.F. so it could never be used to harm, only to heal. And she kept up twice weekly appointments with Mai to get her own head back in order.

While working on B.A.R.F. and moving it through the Stark Industries R&D (under Tony's sarcastic guidance and Pepper's more useful guidance), she had an idea about how the augmented reality technology could be expanded to other areas, and ended up creating a flight simulator for the Air Force with Rhodey's help. It was the next level in flight simulation, integrating with the pilot's mind and honing reflexes and skill.

Maggie quickly found that there were certain boundaries in tech development she couldn't bring herself to cross. Some of the Stark Industries old guard approached her about developing weapons, but she took one look at them and their ideas and flat out refused. She did develop some non-lethal weapons alongside Tony, but that was just for the Avengers. She particularly had fun with the wrist-mounted energy blasters.

She and Tony also worked on sustainable energy, bouncing off of the progress he'd made since Stark Tower first went up, and looking to the future. On any given day, Maggie's mind was flipping from complex neurological integration theories, to augmented reality development, to power relays, to high-powered solar farms. Rhodey once asked how she could stand to have all that in her head at once, but she just shrugged and said "I figure I've got the room for it. Why not use it?"

She sent Bucky long letters about what she was working on, and he would reply  _I only understand a small percentage of what you just wrote, doll, but what I do understand is that you're changing the world. I'm proud of you_. She worried that she was boring him with her long letters about the applicability of her designs and the minutia of power relays and circuitry production, but Bucky said he didn't mind. He had spent two years with her raving about this stuff, he said – receiving it through the Kimoyo bead was kind of nice.

 

Maggie also had to adjust to suddenly being rich. Even without the significant portion she'd donated to the HERACLES Survivor Support Fund, she found herself the owner of half of her parents' stuff, adjusted for inflation, and legally entitled to half of Stark Industries. Naturally, once her criminal charges were cleared the SI board freaked out a little over what she might plan to do, but she waved them off. She settled for the same percentage of shares that Tony had: a controlling share, but not a dominating one. She also ended up on the payroll for R&D, since she was technically one of SI's major developers now. The patent display room at the Avengers Facility started to fill up.

It wasn't all work, though. Maggie had become a public figure, and that took some getting used to. She was pretty good at avoiding paparazzi, thanks to her practice avoiding HYDRA and the Avengers and pretty much everyone on the planet for two years, but sometimes pictures of her made their way into magazines: walking into convenience stores, getting out of the car outside Stark Mansion, walking down the street. People recognized her on the street as well – mostly she got stares, or fevered whispering once she'd walked past, but sometimes strangers wanted to chat or take a photo. They were mostly pretty nice, save for a few who gave her dirty looks (and that one old lady who screamed at her outside a bodega).

 

Still, Maggie was able to move freely and be a person in the world, which was endlessly fascinating. When she wasn't inventing she explored New York City. Vision had more or less got the hang of his "human" disguise (a tall, pale, blonde-haired man who still dressed like a professor) so he was her usual exploring partner – they visited all the tourist traps, tried out Starbucks and baseball games and the subway. Vision liked people watching and historical landmarks, Maggie liked sight-seeing and trying every new food she came across (Ethiopian cuisine ended up being a highlight). They chatted about their respective fugitive loved ones, asking after their health and bonding over the difficulties of maintaining long-distance relationships.

Vision wasn't the only one she explored the city with, however. When Pepper had free time they went to MoMA to further Maggie's fine arts education, and visited other museums and art galleries that Pepper recommended. Pepper introduced Maggie to brunch, and they ended up having a weekly debrief over mimosas at their favorite brunch spot in Manhattan.

Rhodey didn't really like walking amongst the masses of people in NYC with his exosuit, so they tended to hang out back at the facility or in smaller towns throughout the state.

Maggie and Tony usually spent time together in the workshop, though sometimes they went on road trips around the facility in Tony's criminally underused sports cars. Roaring down the highway in a sleek red Porsche wasn't exactly flying, but it felt close enough to it that Maggie noticed Tony go pale every time she got behind the wheel of one of his cars. Once or twice he took her to a party, and once to a casino, but Maggie didn't like being surrounded and stared at by strangers, and Tony didn't exactly look like he was enjoying himself. So they avoided the crowds.

The long hours in the workshop felt as natural as breathing for the two of them, and they navigated around each other as if they'd been doing it their whole lives. When Pepper was busy they reminded each other to eat, drink, and sleep. Tony had a bad habit of falling asleep in the workshop, and sometimes he woke up gasping and covered in cold sweat from a nightmare. Maggie knew what he dreamed about: weapons and hard faces in the shadows of a cave, the vast black emptiness of space swallowing him whole, their mother's dying gasps. She suspected he'd been having these nightmares a long time. She helped him through them as best as she could, and though she never made the mistake of falling asleep in the workshop Tony was there whenever she had a particularly vivid flashback or got caught up in a self-effacing loop of guilt and horror.

 

* * *

 

One weekend, Maggie went to Brooklyn. She'd been avoiding the area, but Shirley had offered to show her around and… Bucky had said it would be good to hear her impression of the area.  _Maybe you can let me know how much it's changed._

She couldn't quite bring herself to go to Coney Island without him, but Shirley walked her around the neighborhood and pointed out the school Steve and Bucky had gone to, their favorite haunts, the shop where Shirley had met her husband. They walked to the building where Steve used to live, where a plaque had been erected. Maggie ran her fingers over the metal until she reached the line:  _Steve Rogers' best friend James "Bucky" Buchanan Barnes lived just a few blocks away_.

Maggie looked up with questioning eyes, but Shirley just smiled sadly at her. "That building got knocked down years ago, sweetheart. It's a nightclub now. I'm sorry."

Maggie shook her head. "I didn't expect everything to be the same. Bucky certainly didn't." She turned back to the plaque. It felt so strange, seeing Bucky's name engraved in metal like that. Like he was an historical artifact. "Is it weird?" she asked, then gestured at the plaque. "All this stuff."

Shirley sighed. "Yes. Life is different when your brother is a famous war hero. And then it's  _very_ different when he's a resurrected war prisoner who did terrible things under HYDRA's influence. But I think most people my age find it strange to see the things we grew up with become history." She smiled and patted Maggie's shoulder. "One day you'll be in history books."

Maggie blanched. "Oh god."

"For what it's worth," Shirley laughed, "I think you're leaving a damn good legacy." She turned and paced away from the plaque and Steve's old apartment building, giving Maggie space.

Maggie kept staring at the plaque, but she didn't really see it.  _Legacy._ She was pretty sure this wasn't what her dad had been talking about when he spoke about the  _Stark legacy_ that she and Tony needed to uphold.

She recalled Zola's words:  _You are the greatest weapon Howard Stark ever created, Wyvern. And you will turn his legacy to dust._

Maggie sighed. Some days it seemed like all the things her dad worked so hard for had failed. Howard Stark had fought with the SSR to end HYDRA – but they'd returned and infected the very organisation he had founded. He had also been the most famous weapons contractor in the world – and now Stark Industries no longer produced weapons. His two children had not exactly ended up as the successful CEOs and inventors he'd intended – one of them had given up control of the company and become a superhero, the other had murdered dozens of people and was only just now clawing her life back.

Maggie took a deep breath in through her nose, and out through her mouth. She was proud of her dad, but... Shirley had called it  _her_ legacy.  _She_  had to be responsible for it, not her father – she had to work at it every day, fighting to better the world around her. The Stark legacy wasn't about weapons any more, or about S.H.I.E.L.D. It was about defending the world.

So maybe she had turned Howard's legacy to dust. Tony, too: they'd both had a part in burning it to the ground.

But they were both pretty good at rising from the ashes.

 

* * *

 

Throughout her adventures and inventions, Maggie kept up the slow back-and-forth Kimoyo communication with Bucky. They'd negotiated a strange sort of long distance relationship, based on glowing letters that faded into the ether once read.

Maggie missed Bucky so much, missed the physicality of him; sometimes she found herself going half-mad thinking about this grey-blue eyes and the way they crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and about the warmth of him beside her and his long hair and his laugh. Thanks to the Kimoyo bead she had his soul, though, and she would have to be happy with that for now. Still, that didn't stop her fingers from itching whenever she read his words, wishing she could reach out and touch him.

Bucky didn't like to make himself too aware of the world outside of Wakanda –  _I need a damn break,_ is how he put it – but he did keep up with the news about Maggie. He talked about the articles he read, usually with offers to fight the writer for her, or a teasing remark, or adoring praise. He told her about the things he'd learned living off the land, and Maggie often found herself looking out the window at the futuristic Avengers facility and wishing she could run away to a mud hut by a lake, where she could live with Bucky and tend to goats and be happy and safe.

Bucky was also keeping up with his twenty-first century education, so he and Maggie traded popular media recommendations and discussed books and movies. Since the  _brb_ incident Princess Shuri had apparently taken it upon herself to teach Bucky about all things internet, so Maggie found herself learning about modern digital culture via Kimoyo bead, from a World War II veteran. Peter, at least, was very impressed when she shared her new knowledge.

Maggie marveled one evening that they had almost formed a normal, modern relationship: they traded memes (in text form) and used stupid internet references. She wrote one night:  _Who would've thought it, Bucky? A ninety nine year old and a thirty year old, neither of whom knew anything about internet culture until three years ago. Look at us go!_

He wrote back:  _You need to stop pointing out our ages like that, it's really weird. I'm probably only thirty! But you're right, we're not doing too bad._

Maggie grinned at his response, then wrote:  _brb, about to go hang out with your eighty five year old sister who treats me like a grandchild._

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Bucky turned one hundred. On the day Maggie had lunch with Shirley and they wrote a Kimoyo message to Bucky.

It was nice, but it still hurt to be so far away from him on his birthday. Looking back, Maggie realized that she and Bucky had celebrated his last three birthdays together: his ninety seventh in Peru, just two months after they broke away from HYDRA, then his ninety eighth in Australia just after they'd actually become a couple, and then his ninety ninth in Europe, a few months before their world fell apart. And now they were connected through strange Wakandan beads, on other sides of the world.

Still, she got to tease him about being a hundred years old. And that made her feel a little better.

 

* * *

 

One afternoon Maggie came back to the mansion to find Tony waiting for her. "Hey, what's up?"

He opened his mouth, but when she approached his nose scrunched up and he backed away. "You stink, Maggie, what  _is_ that?"

She shrugged. "I made friends with one of the horses down at Central Park."

"You can't… what… there aren't just  _wild horses_ in Central Park–"

"Oh, it was a police horse."

He stared hard at her. "And where was the police officer?"

"She was there."

"And she just let you pat her horse?"

"Yeah." Maggie shrugged again. She liked animals, sue her. That was part of the reason she liked Central Park so much, she got to pat everyone's dogs.

Tony started muttering about needing to get her a pet, but Maggie cut him off. "So did you want something?"

"Always, you should know this by now." He waved a hand. "But this time… there's something I want to show you."

 

* * *

 

It turned out what Tony wanted to show her was not an awesome new invention or a plane, which was what Maggie had been guessing.

Instead, he took her to their parents' graves.

"Oh," she said, when Happy pulled up to the Woodlawn Cemetery. It looked like a nice place, if a little bleak in winter – the bare tree branches arched over the snow-laden ground, marked by slate grey headstones. Maggie turned to Tony. "Why…?"

He climbed out of the car, and she followed him out. Once they stood in the cold air, their breaths coming out in puffs of condensation, Tony turned to her. "I… do you remember the other week when you were talking about dad?"

Maggie remembered. It had been after her 'legacy' revelation in Brooklyn. She'd wanted to get some of her thoughts off her chest, and Tony had been a ready listener. She nodded.

"Well I guess I realized that I've had this place to myself for twenty six years – not that I visited all that much, sorry – but you… you've never been." He shrugged, and then crossed his arms across his chest uncomfortably. He wore his sunglasses, so Maggie couldn't see his eyes. "Thought you might want to visit."

Maggie let out another puff of breath. This felt like a gesture, or a symbol of some kind. She wasn't sure what it meant exactly, but it felt a little like forgiveness for something. "Thank you, Tony."

He shrugged. "Whatever."

He led her through the quiet paths until they came to three surprisingly simple headstones under an ash tree. Maggie didn't know what she'd been expecting, but the sight of the stones just standing there in the ground, dusted with snow and looking as if they belonged there… it pushed the air out of her lungs.

Tony dropped back and let her stand in front of the graves. She focused on the larger two first:

_Howard Anthony Walter Stark_

_Maria Collins Carbonell Stark_

Other than their names and dates of birth and death, there was no inscription. She was kind of glad about that – she didn't want to know what people would have put on their graves.

Maggie stood there for a long time. She wasn't really sure what she thought about – she wasn't particularly spiritual, and the idea that her parents' bodies were just a few feet underground made her skin crawl. She hadn't thought about their graves before now, not really – ever since she'd remembered their existence she'd known they were  _gone,_ never to be seen again. But seeing their graves, seeing some reminder that they had been a physical part of this world… it was nice. It reminded her to  _remember._

At first her memories were of blood and fire, those last violent moments of her parents lives. She remembered being in that car, injured and afraid, and she remembered watching those moments a second time in a frozen bunker in Siberia. A chill swept over her. But then her memories turned further back, to what little childhood she'd had before HYDRA took her. She thought of warm hands stroking her hair; looking up at her father and thinking that he was invincible, that he was larger than the world; curling into her mother's side as she played the piano.

After a few long moments of savoring what few memories of her parents she had, Maggie took a few steps to the third grave. It was smaller than the others.

_Margaret Abigail Stark_   
_June 2nd 1986 – December 16th 1991._

A lie. They still didn't know the name of the girl who had lain in this grave until only a few years ago. A Jane Doe who lived a short, painful life until she found herself in the wrong grave. Maggie had looked into her cold, blank eyes.

She took a deep breath. "This is weird."

Tony pushed off a nearby tree and walked over to stand next to her. His footsteps crunched in the snow. "Yeah," he said, looking down at Maggie's grave. "Cap thought the same when he saw his own memorial."

Maggie looked up, blinking. Tony didn't usually talk about Steve. She thought about it, and then realized that there was probably another empty grave in Brooklyn with Bucky's name on it. Shirley hadn't taken her there – probably not the kind of memory the woman wanted to revisit.

Maggie looked back to her own grave. Such a strange thing for she and Bucky to have in common.

Tony cleared his throat. "Pepper brought up the idea of maybe… maybe taking it down. Since, y'know, there's no one in it any more and…"

"And I'm not actually dead?"

"Yeah, that."

Maggie sighed. "I don't know. I don't think I ever expected to be responsible for making decisions about my own grave. Is it… does anyone visit it?"

"Mr Jarvis used to," Tony murmured, and Maggie's heart ached. "Rhodey, sometimes. I came once with Pepper. But it's up to you, Maggie."

"I… I really don't know. Maybe leave it? Hey, if we leave it then one day we can just stick me in and…" she trailed off, gesturing with her hands.

Tony gave her an incredulous look. "Are you miming scratching off the date of death and writing on a new one?"

She smiled sheepishly. "Maybe? It's cost-effective."

He rolled his eyes. "Sure, when you die I'll bury you here and write your new date of death in with a sharpie. Happy?"

"Very." She scratched the back of her neck.  _Margaret Abigail Stark. December 16th 1991._ And here she stood, twenty five years later. "We should leave. This is weird, and I can think of a lot of really bad jokes and I want to go before I can't stop myself from saying them."

Tony cocked his head. "Bad jokes?"

"I've got one foot in the grave. Someone just walked over my grave. Coming here was a grave mistake. I'm dying to get out of here–"

His hands flew up. "Okay, Jesus, stop. Let's go."

They didn't talk as they walked out of the cemetery. Maggie found herself caught up in complicated thoughts – maybe taking the grave out was the right thing to do, but it felt as if it belonged beside her parents. Maybe there was a part of herself that belonged in that grave, a part that would never come back. Maggie blinked at the thought, then realized that it didn't make her feel sad. It just felt right.

Tony's arm brushed against hers and broke her out of complicated thoughts. He raised his eyebrows at her. "Want to go get cheeseburgers?"

Maggie blinked, then smiled. "Sure."

 

* * *

 

As Maggie learned more and more about the world she was now a part of, she kept coming up against one particular issue in her research. It was hotly debated around the world, and very close to many peoples' lives. And also close to hers, apparently.

So one afternoon in the workshop with Tony, she set down her tools and turned to face him. He looked up from his holographic equations and raised an eyebrow at her.

"You've got a look on your face," he said warily.

"Yes," she replied, and then crossed her arms. "Look, I don't know a lot about… some things, but I've been doing some research and it seems like there's a lot of importance placed on this particular thing, especially when it comes to telling families–"

"What, Maggot."

She cut herself off, then took a breath. "I'm, um. Bisexual."

Tony blinked. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He swiped away his hologram, then got to his feet and considered her. "Okay. Okay, cool." He walked across the workshop to her, then put a hand on her shoulder and awkwardly patted her. Maggie could see from his face that he was trying to work out what he was supposed to say. "Uh… thank you for telling me."

She shrugged. "Seemed like something people tell their family."

"I guess." He thought about it, still patting her shoulder. "You can't have Pepper."

"Wasn't planning on it."

"Okay. Awesome. Do you need… advice? Or… educational materials?" He winced, eyeing her reaction.

She grinned. "I've got it covered. I've known for a while, just wanted to let you know."

"Well… thanks."

She rolled her eyes at him. "You're welcome. Now stop patting me."

"Gladly." He pulled his hand away with an awkward sigh, then hurried back to his workbench and his project. Maggie smiled at him, then turned back to her work with a lighter heart.

 

When she told the others they seemed equally grateful that she'd told them, though significantly less awkward. And then they all went about their day, because nothing had really changed.

 

* * *

 

It turned out philanthropy ran in the family, because Maggie fell naturally into supporting causes wherever she found them. It started with a spot of art philanthropy, courtesy of Pepper, and then on one of her walks through the city she ended up in a march with an anti-human trafficking group and by the end of the day had become a major donor and was on the group's board. It sort of snowballed from there – she got involved with music and culture, but her heart was focused on human rights. She became one of New York's biggest donation names pretty much overnight, and took a more active position in the organisations that were happy to have her.

Maggie had said she wanted to keep away from the world-saving business for a while, but it seemed it wasn't something she could just turn off. As well as her donation and campaigning work she also naturally became an ear for the Avengers to turn to when they needed advice, help, or just needed someone to vent to about their ongoing missions. She never officially participated – the Accords Committee were still suspicious of her – but she ended up pretty aware of what the Avengers were up to. Her work with HERACLES and other groups ended up putting her in touch with major global players and agencies.

Sort of by accident, Maggie found herself forming a network. The network included law enforcement, intelligence, mercenary, legal and corporate organisations, and advocacy and human rights groups the world over. It turned out she was good at forming relationships with people, and that mixed with her expertise in many areas from espionage to mechanical engineering meant that she brought a lot to the table. She wasn't quite sure what to do with her newfound network, since she hadn't really set out to  _have_ one in the first place. But on a couple of occasions when the Avengers ran up against political blockades or had issues getting help from local groups in countries they ran missions in, Maggie found herself able to help out. Whenever she did the Avengers gave her that  _look_ , as if she was a constant surprise.

The public was of course aware of some of what she was up to. The response was surprisingly positive. Most people seemed surprised – they'd expected her to do press rounds, maybe write a book, but instead she'd branched out to issues beyond her trial. Some accused her of attempting to overthrow the Avengers and the United States from within, but they were in the minority.

She also ended up with a network of HYDRA survivors. That had started when she'd met Hayley Mitchell to ask for some advice about HERACLES, and ended with a group of people who were kind of her friends, kind of business associates, and kind of advisers. It was a weird relationship, but they made it work.

A side effect of her growing influence was that the Accords Committee kept an ever-closer eye on her. Sometimes one member or another would stop by for a 'random' chat whenever they were at the facility, and she definitely noticed people following her from time to time. But she wasn't using her enhancements, so she wasn't breaking the Accords.  _Let them watch._

 

* * *

 

March, 2017

Even as her life grew in new and surprising ways, Maggie was still fixated on her past. Or rather, a very specific part of her past: her wings.

For a long time, her broken wings had been left untouched on the bench at the back of the workshop. When she needed to calm herself down she still went to the haphazard metal statue of wings in her room, but she was beginning to realize that she couldn't leave her wings behind. Throughout the trial it felt like she should forget about them – to so many people, her wings were a symbol of oncoming death; an omen. And it wasn't like she  _needed_ wings any more, without the constant need to be ready to flee or defend herself.

And yet, her thoughts kept straying. She sought out the thrill of flying in everything she did, from driving Tony's sports cars to feeling the breeze on her face at the top of the Empire State Building. She woke up from dreams of the wind in her wings, and burst into tears. Sometimes she felt a phantom ache where her wings should be – she could almost feel them itching to unfurl.

And she found herself drawn more and more often to the back of the workshop. Sometimes she just stared at the tarp-covered bench, sometimes she peeled it back and winced at the sight of her mangled wing. Sometimes she dared to touch her wings, folding and unfolding the joints, peering at the twisted wiring. She'd fixed up some of the superficial dents and rips a few months ago, but she no longer felt that instinctive urge to fix the damage.

She wanted to fly again, but the idea of repairing her wings felt… wrong. Uncomfortable and unnatural. Maybe it was all the latent memories that the trial had brought up, but these no longer felt like  _hers._

She was staring at her wings, contemplating the conundrum she found herself in, when on the other side of the workshop Tony rolled away from his holographic plans with a grunt and got to his feet. Maggie blinked and looked over. He'd been working on some project involving his armor for a few weeks, and she knew he was getting pretty deep into it – he muttered about theories when he wasn't in the workshop and doodled designs on every free surface. Pepper was getting fed up with it.

Maggie cocked her head at him. He paced around his workspace, running a hand through his hair and muttering to himself. Dum-E rolled over and Tony swatted his claw away. "You're no help," Tony grumbled at the robot, and Dum-E chirped cheerily.

Maggie walked over. "C'mon, Tony, spill. I know you said you didn't need help, but you're obviously stuck."

He glanced up from his pacing and looked at her, hair askew. "Who says I'm stuck?"

She raised her eyebrows. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"

"He's stuck," the A.I. confirmed.

Tony scowled. He glared at Maggie for a few more moments until he sighed, and the frustration drained out of his face. "Okay. Mags, I've got this idea."

 

Maggie sat on the edge of the workbench as Tony told her about his idea: a new generation of technology, billions of smart machine particles that intuited human thought and generated all matter of technology, including the Iron Man armor. Maggie listened like a kid hearing a bed time story.

"I'm gonna call it nanotech," Tony explained, bringing up his initial designs. "Got the idea from bad sci-fi – and kind of from Vision's matter manipulation – and figured out how to make it work. Well, kind of. I can't figure out any kind of base alloy to synthesize it, and since T'Challa's not exactly handing out Vibranium gift baskets I'm sort of… yeah, stuck."

Maggie wordlessly pulled the holographic array towards her and looked through his plans.

She'd known for a long time that her brother was a world-changing genius, but it was easy to forget when he did things like get in arguments with his completely non-verbal robots, or when he fell asleep in the Avengers common room even though he  _knew_ that Rhodey would always take that opportunity to draw on his face.

But this was a wake-up call. Maggie's mind lit up as she looked through Tony's new plans, stunned at the brilliance of it and excited at the possibilities. She saw the bones of what Tony wanted to achieve, and she also saw the empty spaces, the areas where Tony just didn't have the resources to achieve what he wanted. He'd once discovered a whole new element to overcome a similar problem, but it seemed he hadn't been able to this time around.

Maggie cocked her head. Vibranium would work as a base point for these designs, sure. But so would something else.

She looked up from the designs and met Tony's eye. "I can do it."

 

* * *

 

Maggie had gone sixteen years without another soul on earth knowing that she knew how to create Adamantium. She didn't think twice about telling Tony.

He was surprised, but ultimately his fascination about the alloy overcame it. Then his fascination gave way to excitement about the breakthrough, and they quickly devolved into science. They talked over one another and dove fingers-first into the holographic designs, twisting and shaping and  _creating._ It wasn't that they needed to make the tech  _out of_ Adamantium, but the alloy was a key jumping point at a molecular level to formulate the nanotech and bring it to life. The end result would be particles stronger than Adamantium alone, maybe even stronger than Vibranium.

In the end the pure science took them three days. They didn't leave the lab until Pepper came down and yelled at them to shower and sleep, and by that point they'd already developed the nanotech completely in theory. When they no longer smelled so bad, and were a little better rested, they started synthesizing it.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Maggie and Tony hunched over the workbench before a tiny block of unassuming metal. Tony, who had electrodes plastered across his skull and a feverish glint of excitement in his eyes, glanced up at her.

"You ready?"

Maggie, who wore a maroon shirt with no less than three coffee stains in it, met his eyes. "Are you? You're the one driving."

He grinned. "I'm ready."

They both looked back down at the dice-sized cube. For a few seconds nothing happened. And then it shivered and moved.

Maggie gasped. It was as if the metal had simply come to life. It expanded before her eyes, lines of metal creeping out like feathers, or frost patterns on a window. The particles formed into wires, metal plates, hinges, and supports. She tore her eyes away for a moment to glance up at Tony's face – his dark eyes were intensely focused on the unfolding particles, his jaw clenched. As she watched, a drop of sweat rolled down his temple.

Maggie looked back down at the nanotech just as it began to settle into place. She grinned at the shape Tony had chosen – an Iron Man face plate. Before her eyes, a sheen of gold particles swept across it.

"Holy  _shit_ ," she breathed, and reached out to touch it. The face plate was firm under her fingers, sleek and strong. "So the color manipulation works too, that's good to know."

Tony let out a shuddering breath and finally looked up. The second he did, the mask dissolved under Maggie's fingers and collapsed into a mass of strangely liquid-seeming nanoparticles.

Tony leaned back and wiped sweat from his forehead.

"Hard workout?" she asked with a grin.

He rolled his eyes at her. "You try manipulating an advanced smart technology into complex machinery with  _just your mind_."

"Alright. Hand it over."

He raised an eyebrow at her but peeled off the electrodes. When Maggie had her turn she created an energy blaster that wasn't  _quite_ functional – he was right, this was difficult. It required a level of focus and multitasking ability that she'd never needed before. It was like formulating blueprints for a machine in her mind all at once. She and Tony agreed that it would be worth pre-programming the nanotech with certain designs, so the user wouldn't have to put quite so much thought into very specific wiring and mechanisms.

They traded control of the nanotech back and forth for the rest of the day, creating larger and more complex machinery as they got the hang of it. It was fun, and exhilarating, because they both knew that this was something the world had never seen, something that they themselves could hardly believe they'd created.

At the end of the day, as Tony started designing an arc reactor integrated with the nanotech, Maggie cocked her head at him. "You're going to make nanotech armor, aren't you?"

He paused. "Uh, yeah. I mean, I'm going to look into other avenues as well, but the armor's the main goal. Was that not clear?"

"No, I got that. I'm glad, you'll be safer than ever in armor made of this stuff. But I think you should talk to Pepper about it." She raised her eyebrows at him. She didn't usually get involved in Tony and Pepper's discussions about Tony's crimefighting, but she didn't want to be an accomplice to Tony going behind Pepper's back.

He looked up. "I already did."

"Oh. How did that go?"

He grimaced. "She, uh… she's worried. Doing this is kind of saying I'm in it for the long haul, which… yeah, I am. This" – he gestured to his initial designs for a new nanotech chest-mounted arc reactor – "is a statement about what I want my future to look like.  _Our_ future. I'm doing this to protect us."

Maggie eyed her brother, the lines on his face and his restlessly tapping fingers. His future with Pepper had always seemed guaranteed to her, but she knew how complicated relationships could be. She also knew they'd had issues with Tony's commitment to Iron Man versus his commitment to Pepper before. And when he said  _protect us_ , she had a feeling he didn't mean just him and Pepper, or just him and his close family. He meant the world. "How did she take it?"

He leaned back. "She knows who I am. She says she's…" he glanced away. "She says she's proud of me."

The corner of Maggie's mouth crept up. "She's not the only one."

Tony rolled his eyes and leaned forward, apparently over the moment. "Eugh, Maggot. Why'd you bring this up anyway, if you were going to be a big dork about it–"

"Talking about your feelings is important, and healthy!"

"Whatever, Dr Phil," he said, waving her off.

"But I didn't just want to talk about the armor!" she protested, and walked into the middle of his arc reactor designs. They dissolved around her in a starburst of blue light. Tony frowned at her.

"What, you want to ask how my PTSD is going, too? Because it's great, thanks for asking–"

"I wasn't going to talk about that, but the fact that you brought it up is very telling–"

He waved her off again. "Stop psychoanalysing me, Freud, what did you want to talk about?"

She took a breath, and held up two fingers. "Okay. First – what's up with you giving me psychologist nicknames now?" He scowled and she moved on before he could answer. "Secondly…" she bit her lip. "About the nanotech. I have an… idea."

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "Another one?"

"Yes. I would like to… use it."

His other eyebrow rose. "You gotta give me more than that, Margarine."

She gritted her teeth, then took a deep breath and finally spit it out: "I want to use the nanotech to make new wings."

Tony's eyebrows dropped into a frown, but not a disapproving one. He just looked… cautious. "Maggie…" he began, then reached up to rub a hand across his jaw. He stared at her as if she were a machine he hadn't figured out yet. He opened his mouth again. "Maggie, you know the Accords Committee–"

"I'm not going to use the wings!" she interrupted, then hesitated. "Well I  _am_ going to use them, but not in any way that breaks the Accords. I asked Andrea and Diego to take a look at the legal papers, and they said the Accords forbid me from taking part in any police, military, or espionage action, or using my enhancements to break the law. And just by flying around I wouldn't be doing that! I'm already on their stupid registry and under all their tracking requirements."

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's a real slippery slope. Plus, using this new tech to make brand new wings? The Accords Committee is going to think you're up to something."

"They already think I'm up to something, but I'm sticking to the rules. They can't do anything to me."

He gave her a pained look. "Maggie, c'mon. You gotta know that if they really wanted you in the Raft you'd  _be_ there already."

She swallowed. Tony was right – the Accords Committee might function under the premise of sticking to prearranged laws and protecting civilians, but she'd dealt with them long enough to know that they decided what should happen to enhanced people, then created rules to fit that decision. She'd skated just out of their reach with her murder acquittal, high public visibility, and the protection of the Avengers.

She straightened her shoulders. "I know, Tony. But I need to do this."

" _Why_?"

She wrapped her arms around herself. She knew he'd ask this, and she still hadn't really thought of an answer. She frowned. "I can't really explain it. It's… everyone's been talking about me like there are two halves: the Wyvern, and Maggie. But it's not that simple. I am Maggie Stark, but I'm also still the Wyvern. The Wyvern used to be under HYDRA's control, but now she's not. She's still in me, all…" Maggie made a twisting gesture with her hands. "All tangled up inside me. I am Maggie Stark," she said, suddenly firm, "and I'm the Wyvern."

Tony eyed her, his attention focused on her. "And, what, you need the wings for this… identity crisis?"

She sighed frustratedly. "It's not a  _crisis_ , Tony. I know who I am, more or less, and I still can't really explain it but I  _need_ my wings. They're a part of me." She met his eyes beseechingly, her palms open in front of her and her chest tight.

He eyed her for another few long seconds. Eventually, he sighed. "I don't understand. Not really, but maybe a little – I don't think I could give up Iron Man." He dropped back in his chair and ran a hand over his head. "Alright, fine. You can use the nanotech to make wings."

" _Yes_!" Maggie flung two fists in the air, then dropped them when he shot her a despairing look. "Thank you Tony, you won't regret it."

"I think I just might," he grumbled. "Why'd you want to make new ones anyway? What's wrong with fixing those?" He jerked his head at the tarp-covered bench at the back of the workshop.

Maggie chewed her lip. "I haven't really upgraded those wings in nearly eight years. Sometimes HYDRA techs noticed the wings were malfunctioning, or they needed a new function for some mission, and they'd order me to do it. And then when I was on the run I was just… repairing. Over and over." She took a deep breath as she finally understood the unnatural feeling that had prickled over her whenever she contemplated repairing the wings. "I'm done patching up dents," she said. "It's time to start over."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well my dears, the end is in sight - there will be 6-7 more chapters before The Wyvern goes on hiatus (aaaahhhh!). I've got an idea for Maggie's journey through Infinity War but I've decided not to write it until I see Endgame, so this fic will go on hiatus just before the events of IW.
> 
> But don't be scared! By the time we get to this story's last chapter I should have written a bunch of AU one shots that will be posted during the hiatus to tide you over. Over and out!


	74. Chapter 74

 

March, 2017

From: Maggie  
 _You know how I said I might have a new project coming up? Well_ _today_ _I got started on my new wings._

From: Bucky  
 _New? That's great doll, I didn't think you'd go long without finding some way to fly again. Is it going to be okay with the Accords Committee?_

From: Maggie  
 _You know me too well. I'm itching to get into the air again. As for the Committee, I'm not technically breaking the Accords but I'm going to keep a close eye on them just in case._

From: Bucky  
 _Smart. Be careful Meg. But have fun, too._

 

* * *

 

"Are you ready?" asked Dr Cho, dressed not in her scrubs but in casual track pants and a bright yellow t-shirt. Tony stood by her side, trying his best to hide his concern.

For the past week Tony and Maggie had spent most of their waking (and some of their sleeping) hours in the workshop, designing and manufacturing Tony's new armor and Maggie's new wings. This project felt different from all the others – Maggie cared about the prosthetics, and B.A.R.F., but designing a whole new set of wings felt less like working on a project and more like shaping her dreams into reality _._ It felt like growth. And working on the wings with a completely fresh outlook was actually fun. These wings didn't belong to HYDRA. They belonged to  _her._

But as she'd finalized her designs, Maggie scanned the wing moorings set into her back and realized that both had suffered minute damage from the incident in Germany - nothing she felt day-to-day, but it would make flying impossible. She needed repairs, but the very thought of lying flat on a table with someone sticking tools into her back brought her out in a cold sweat, and made her head spin.

And yet today, she felt calm.

She lay not on her front, but on her back on a modified dentist chair, a warm blanket draped over her. The room around her, she knew, was a sterile operating room, but in appearance it was just a comfy, warm-toned room with no white walls or glinting tools in sight. She glanced to her left, where a wide window showed a view of the lake, then up at the ceiling, where they'd installed a TV.

Dr Cho and Tony stood to her left; on her other side stood Vision, there to assist with the procedure and to offer moral support; and Mai, who was on hand in case of a potential panic attack.

Maggie and Tony had cut a hole out of the back of the dentist chair, so her wing moorings were accessible, and they'd also formulated vials and vials of high-grade anesthetic. Maggie had been involved in every step of the process, including instructing Tony and Dr Cho on what exactly they'd have to do to repair her moorings. She was in control.  _And no matter what,_ she told herself,  _this is better than when the moorings were first installed._

"Maggie?" Dr Cho murmured, and Maggie blinked. Right.  _Are you ready?_

She took a long, deep breath, and nodded. Her back still felt exposed, naked to the open air on the other side of the dentist chair, and she had to grit her teeth when Dr Cho inserted a drip into each of her arms, but she trusted these people. She felt safe.

 

She was later informed that the surgery went well, but she didn't pay much attention while it was happening. The anesthetic didn't quite knock her out, just made everything feel a bit like a dream. So she watched Jurassic Park through bleary eyes, drooling slightly, not absorbing much of the movie or the world around her apart from a vague notion that  _dinosaurs are cool_ , and a numbed sense of tingling in the middle of her back.

 

* * *

 

Alone in her room later that night, Maggie climbed groggily out of her bed and padded into her bathroom. She still felt a bit off from the anesthetic, and her back ached a little, but overall everything had gone off without a hitch.

In the dim half-light of her bathroom, Maggie slipped out of her shirt and peeled back the gauze Dr Cho had taped over the moorings. She closed her eyes and took a breath, then turned so her back faced the mirror.

She'd more or less known what she would see, but when she opened her eyes and looked into the mirror the bathroom echoed with a gasp.

She'd always looked  _strange_ thanks to the two metal holes in the middle of her back, but this was something else. The moorings themselves looked sleeker, more modern, and Maggie realized that they  _felt_ slightly different too. Tony and Dr Cho had repaired the damage within the moorings themselves and modified them to suit her new designs.

That wasn't the only change, though. She'd had Tony install a new modification.

It looked kind of like a tattoo, now she thought about it. Two long, gunmetal grey strips of nanoparticles stretched across her back like a large letter  _X._ The  _X_ wrapped around her shoulder blades, curving from the top of her shoulder and down to her ribcage, following the muscles of her back. She rolled her shoulders experimentally and watched the metal flow with her skin, sinuous and strong. Maggie could feel the metal there, but it wasn't intrusive – the particles matched her body's temperature. She reached over her shoulder and ran her fingers across the line running up to her left shoulder, and smiled when her fingers couldn't detect a difference between flesh and metal. She dropped her hand and went back to staring at the new shape across her back.

The nanoparticles were a dark, dark grey that seemed black in the low light. Maggie shifted her stance, and as the slanting moonlight hit her back she caught a glint of dark red. She grinned. These were a part of her now.

Her attention shifted back to the moorings themselves, and at the sudden level of focus the moorings activated, their edges glowing a dark red. Maggie's eyebrows raised, and then she concentrated on deactivating them. She wanted to test them, but she had to sleep off the anesthetic first.

Maggie took in the image of herself in the mirror, her dark hair spilling over the top of her spine as she looked over her shoulder. She didn't look normal, with the two metal holes in her back and the dark, arcing design, but it looked like  _her._ She couldn't wait to see if this worked.

With one last smile, Maggie pulled her shirt back on and padded back to bed. But before she went back to sleep, she sent a message to Bucky through the Kimoyo bead:  _Surgery went fine, barely hurts at all. And Bucky… Tony's been worried that by going through the surgery and changing the way I look that I'm changing myself, and he's right – I changed today. But that's a good thing. Every day I feel more and more like myself. I might not be exactly the person you knew back in Romania, and I don't think you're exactly the same as you were back then either. But we're both changing into better versions of ourselves. And I can't wait to be a better version of_ us  _again._

She slipped into dreams she wouldn't remember the next morning, but she never forgot the message she woke up to:

_I love every version of you, Meg. I can't wait to spend my next hundred years with you and get to know all the versions to come.  
_ _You're beautiful always, but you're stunning when you fly. Go be stunning, doll._

 

* * *

 

Tony had wanted to do the first test of the wings in the demolitions bay, where there were fire extinguishers and no edges to fall off, but Maggie had argued that if they went to the roof there was less chance of the Accords Committee finding out. And also, she wanted to feel the wind on her face.

So she, Tony, Rhodey, and Vision gathered on the roof of the main hangar, on the end closest to the forest. If Maggie squinted she could see the giant 'A' emblazoned on the far end of the roof. It was one of the first warm days of the year, with a breeze skimming the tops of the trees in the forest and brushing against Maggie's face. She turned her face to the sky. She'd been checking the conditions since she woke up that morning, but it didn't hurt to check one last time: slightly overcast, with the occasional break in the clouds through which the sun shone down.

"How're you feeling, Maggot?"

Maggie looked back down and met Tony's anxious gaze. The first test of his nanotech armor last week had gone great (and looked  _awesome_ ), and he walked around most of the time with his new triangular nanotech arc reactor on his chest - it seemed both he and Maggie planned to carry the metal parts of themselves with them forever. But that didn't stop him worrying about her. "I'm fine, Tony." She cocked her head. "Well, maybe a little nervous."

"It's not too late to back out," Rhodey piped up, his arms folded across his chest. "You're fresh out of surgery, and it's understandable to need a few days to–"

"Oh, I'm not backing out," she replied with a grin. "Vision, do you have those…?"

Vision produced a pair of red-tinted goggles (not the ones from the evidence box in the Acquisitions room – she'd had these made specially) and handed them over with an unspoken question in his eyes:  _are you sure_?

She nodded at him, flashing him a quick smile, then pulled the goggles over her face. She wore a close-fitting dark blue flight suit that was standard issue for Avengers pilots, and lightweight boots. She took a long, deep breath. "Okay. Wind conditions, check?"

F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice emerged from the bracelet fitted to Maggie's wrist (not a Manacle, just F.R.I.D.A.Y.-equipped): "Wind conditions are optimal at 14 knots."

"Airspace?"

"Cleared."

Maggie eyed her brother out of the corner of her eye. "Tony anxiety levels?"

"High, but manageable," said F.R.I.D.A.Y. without skipping a beat. Tony scowled, and Rhodey chuckled behind his hand.

"Alright," Maggie said, rolling her shoulders. "Let's do this."

For a few silent seconds she just stood there, her hands balled into fists by her sides and her eyes squeezed shut, trying to activate the nanotech's neural uplink. But then she felt the wing moorings come to life.

She knew the edges of the wing moorings were glowing a dark red, knew every detail of the minute shifts and data transfers occurring in her back right now. But that knowledge took a back seat when she felt the nanoparticles on her skin begin to  _move._ They slid in from the  _X_ shaped design on her back, smooth as water down a stream, flooding into her wing mooring and then sprouting out through the holes in her shirt, arcing away from her spine and forming into metal bones. The nanotech housed in her wing moorings flowed out after the rapidly solidifying bones to form webbing, circuitry, and engines.

Wings grew from her back in a mind-boggling transformation. Feeling the wings arc out and solidify on either side of her, Maggie was reminded of old movies where the previously-unassuming human transforms into a monster. But she didn't feel like a monster.

Her wings grew from her back, growing black and wide to her sides, and she felt a weight – not as heavy as her last wings, but noticeable – settle on her metal spine. The muscles in her shoulder, back, waist, and legs adjusted for the weight as if it had been hours, and not months, since she'd last worn wings. She rolled her shoulders and felt data pour in: not all of a sudden, like when she slotted her wings in before, but gradually. Like unfurling a new limb. She felt the cool breeze against the wing membranes, the power running through them, even the warm sun warming the metal. She _felt_ all of it, just like she felt her last wings, and the nanotech ensured an even smoother neural link. There was no noticeable difference in sensation or responsiveness between her arms and her wings now. They were a part of her - completely.

Maggie breathed, and her wings rose and fell.

She realized that she'd closed her eyes at some point as her wings grew outward from her body, and opened them to see the three Avengers staring at her, their eyes round as coins.

Maggie looked from them, to her wings.

They were about the same size of her old ones, but sleeker, honed to be far more aerodynamic and efficient. To her, they were beautiful. Fully extended to either side of her they looked like dragons wings, or bats wings, two arcing bones with five "fingers" pointing down, ending in a sharp barb. Two more barbs emerged from the top arc of each wing, glinting and sharp in the sunlight. The wings themselves were still a dark gunmetal grey, but now with scale detailing on the webbing; hundreds of tiny enfolded metal circlets that enhanced flexibility and impenetrability. In the direct sunlight, her webbing gleamed with hints of dark red.

Maggie pulled her wings in close to her body so the warm metal hugged her flesh, then unfolded them once more, feeling the stretch of metal joints and tendons. A thrill ran up her spine and she couldn't help the grin slowly creeping across her face.

Tony, Vision, and Rhodey were still watching her, and from the looks on their faces she could tell they didn't know what to say. She didn't either. So she paced across the roof toward the edge, where concrete gave way to empty space and then trees below.

Maggie paused right on the edge, her toes hanging in open air, and looked down. She felt the others come up behind her. She shivered. Her wings were spread and she was  _so close,_ but…

"Last time I flew, I fell," she murmured. She winced at the memory: shrieking metal, splintering, cracking, then the wind rushing in her ears and screams ripped from her throat as pain like she'd never known consumed her whole. The  _crunch_ and shower of sparks as she collided with the ground.

She took a step back from the edge, and her wings folded in to her back.

"Not this time," Rhodey said, his own voice low with the memory of his own fall. He came and stood beside her, one step away from the edge of the roof.

"And if you fall," Tony said, coming to stand on her other side, "we'll catch you."

Maggie looked up at him, meeting his eyes. He still looked anxious, but there was such surety in his gaze and in his words she knew that there was no chance he would let her get hurt. Her gaze tracked to Rhodey, who looked just as determined as Tony, and then to Vision, who floated a few feet off the edge of the building as if trying to reassure her that the air wasn't so scary.

The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Alright then."

She took ten steps back from the edge, her heart pounding and her nerves singing. Her wings twitched.  _C'mon, Wyvern. You've been doing this your whole life._ For the first time, the name  _Wyvern_ didn't make her gut clench in instinctive fear. It made her want to fly.

She broke into a run, her eyes fixed on the edge and her breath loud in her ears. She made it to the edge in three quick strides, planted her right foot and  _leaped_.

For two breathless, frozen seconds she fell. Her heart rose into her throat and her skin flashed hot and cold with fear, but then her wings unfurled as easy as breathing, catching the air and bearing her into the sky. She gasped, faltering a little, but then her instincts kicked in and she fired up her engines, streamlining her body so one second she was falling, and the next she was flying.

She soared up from the hangar rooftop, just a beating heart and spread wings, and kept on flying until she punched through the clouds in a rush of dense, wet air, and sudden blinding light.

She cried out when she burst out above the clouds, blinking away condensation and tears as she gazed out at the landscape of soft, curving white laid beneath her. The sun shone down on the tops of the clouds and on Maggie, warming her face and drawing a long, gasping breath from her lungs.

For a moment everything was still – Maggie floated in the sky, not flying or falling but just  _breathing_ , weightless in a world of blue and blinding white.

And then her brain caught up with her heart and she let out a  _whoop_ that broke the silence, followed by an uncontrollable laugh that sent her spiraling across the tops of the fluffy clouds, her arms and wings spread and a grin spread from ear to ear.

 

Back on the roof of the hangar, the three Avengers watched in silence as Maggie dipped back through the clouds only to twist with her wings wrapped tight against her body and zip back up, leaving a Maggie-shaped hole in the cloud in her wake.

Tony watched his sister dip in and out of the clouds, and even though she was too far away to hear he could tell she was laughing. She looked…  _like a Wyvern_ , supplied his brain. She kept her body tight and streamlined, and his eye was naturally drawn toward her wide black and red wings that glinted as she twisted through the air. He'd thought the wings looked like weapons last time he saw them. But now… he knew they were so much more than that.

Maggie spun and rolled in the air, clearly having the time of her life, and he squinted up at her with a smile on his face.

"It's weird seeing her like that," Rhodey said, breaking the silence. There was a smile in his voice. "But it's… it's…"

"It's how she's meant to be," Tony finished. He finally got what Maggie had tried to explain to him back in the workshop.  _I am Maggie Stark. And I'm the Wyvern._

He was afraid the world didn't have room for both. But Maggie had been pretty good at forging a space for herself despite all the odds so far. He was inclined to think that she'd come out on top.

 

Maggie swooped in and out of the clouds for a few more minutes, then pulled her wings into her body and dove, slicing through the air with the wind screaming in her ears until she was mere feet from the flat surface of the lake, where she flung her wings out and caught the air beneath her. She misjudged slightly and one of her feet ended up in the water, sending her careening haphazardly sideways until she corrected herself. Flattening her body and spreading her wings wide, Maggie looked down at her own reflection in the water – streaming hair, limbs in tight, wings wide and strong. Her red goggles looked back at her. She was flying so close to the lake that the air pressure pushed water down and out, forming a furrow in the surface behind her feet. Grinning, Maggie reached down to trace a finger along the surface of the lake and laughed at the cool water on her skin and the flying droplets. She twisted again, arcing back into the sky.

_This_ was what she had been waiting for, this was what it meant for all the parts of herself to come together. This was joy, this was laughing in the workshop with Tony, this was dancing with Bucky's arms safe and warm around her, this was the impossible friendships she'd made and the knowledge that she'd made herself into a person, whole and  _happy._ This was Maggie, and this was the Wyvern.

She somersaulted, feeling the air sluice over her body and her wings adjust to the change, then glided down toward the forest. Her brain was coming more online, adjusting to the massive rush of dopamine and adrenaline, and as she marveled at the beautiful intelligence of the nanotech she had an idea.

She flew low to the tops of the dark green trees, and with a single thought felt nanoparticles flow from her wing moorings, down the metal in her bones and toward her heel spurs. She flicked her heel spurs out, slicing through her boots. Guided by her mind, the nanoparticles materialized around her heel spurs and united them to form a long, extended barb that ended in a ball of wickedly sharp spikes - like a medieval weapon. The ball trailed behind her in the air like a barbed tail as she soared over the forest, the metal glinting wickedly in the sunlight. With a sudden flare of her wings and a calculated flick of her legs, Maggie sent the ball sailing through the top of a tree. The tree exploded in a shower of splinters.

_Huh._

A second later Maggie reformed the nanoparticles into two jet boosters at the base of her feet, like Tony's repulsors, and they sent her rocketing back into the sky. A slow grin curled up the corners of her mouth. The only limit to the nanotech was imagination. And she had plenty of that.

Then she reminded herself that she wasn't meant to use the wings or the nanotech for combat, and she went back to doing aerial tricks. Twists, rolls, tumbles, she did it all, practicing all the moves she'd learned during her time as the Wyvern. Though, as she swooped low over the rocky beach of the lake, Maggie reflected that those nanotech energy blasters she'd been developing would be ideal weapons in flight. She pushed the thought to the back of her brain, and focused on enjoying the feeling of flying once more.

 

Maggie came back to the rooftop in a blast of wind, pushing Tony back a step with his hand raised to his eyes. Rhodey, moored in his exosuit, and Vision being intangible, did not move.

She straightened from her low crouch, skin singing with the sudden lack of movement and her chest rising and falling with the rhythm of her heart. She deactivated her wings and the nanotech dissolved and slid back through the holes in her shirt, into the wing moorings and the  _X_ design on her back. Then she spread her arms with a grin.

"How's it feel?" Tony asked with a knowing grin on his face.

"Better than anything I can describe," she grinned back.

Rhodey smiled. "Those things are way more portable than your last ones."

"I know, right? Bye bye backpack disguises. I never have to take off these wings." Maggie's grin spread wider as the thought sent a thrill down her spine. She held up a hand to Vision, who gave her a reluctant high-five.

"Please remember to be careful," the android said. "The fewer people who know you are flight-capable the better, and you must be careful not to break the Accords."

"I know, Vis, I'll be careful. Thank you guys for not dobbing me in or anything."

Tony rolled his eyes. "We're not quite at the snitch level yet," he said, and Maggie's eyebrow rose at the bitterness in his voice.  _So all's not well with the Accords Committee,_ she noted. But she supposed after Ross's stunt with the enhanced-human scanner, she didn't think Tony could forgive and forget. No, she had no doubt he was keeping a very close eye on what the Committee was up to.

Hm. Maggie's stomach suddenly growled, and she put her hand to her abdomen. "Yikes, I'm starving. Who wants to help me make pancakes?"

Vision put his hand in the air. He'd been trying to learn all kinds of recipes (to surprise Wanda, he'd confessed to Maggie).

Tony clapped a hand on Rhodey's shoulder. "I do not," he said. "But I'll happily help you eat them. C'mon, Amelia Earheart."

"That's the nickname you wanna go with?" Rhodey queried, eyebrows high on his forehead.

"No takebacks!" Maggie exclaimed. "Let's go."

 

* * *

 

In the privacy of her own room that night, Maggie watched her naked back and unfurled her wings, admiring the nanotech as it streamed smoothly over her skin and outwards. She marveled that in just a day, she already felt inseparable from these wings – they were a part of her, just like her legs or arms, and she felt safe and powerful with them. She stretched her wings, spreading them across the length of her room, and reached out to touch the webbing. The metal was warmer than her last wings, the same temperature as her body, and the intermeshing scales felt textured under her fingers. She grinned, and her eyes fell on the statue of wings she'd made out of her first bedframe, silhouetted against the window. How far she'd come.

Maggie sat on the edge of her bed, wings draped behind her, and pulled out her Kimoyo bead to tell Bucky about her day.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days, Maggie kept Bucky updated on each new thing she tried with her wings (she'd worked out she could use them as a hammock when she went for a walk in the forest), and he told her about his goats, and the kids from the nearby village who teased him and hung off his arm like so many limpets.

She was a little surprised when one morning she woke up to the message:  _Have you ever thought about having kids, Meg?_

That threw her for a loop, and she didn't reply straight away. Instead she walked around the rest of the morning in a half daze, contemplating a possibility that had never seemed real before. She went to meetings, emailed contacts in philanthropic groups and international organizations, followed up with the Stark Industries board about B.A.R.F., all with her mind somewhere else.

She honestly had never really thought about having children before – she'd almost forgotten that she was even biologically capable of it. HYDRA had certainly never encouraged any feelings of motherhood. It was a crazy thought when she and Bucky were on the run, and since then she hadn't exactly been preparing to settle down what with being a prisoner and then the murder trial. But if she and Bucky found a way to be together again…

A few minutes into that line of thought, her stomach twisted. Any child of hers would automatically be in danger – she was a target for so many reasons, due to her past and current identity. Not to mention Bucky. What kind of a life would that child have?

_A loving one._

The thought struck her out of the blue, and she had to sit down in the nearest chair she could find.

"Maggie?" Pepper called from the other side of the facility's main foyer. "Are you okay?"

Maggie waved absently, her gaze trained on the unassuming carpet and her thoughts whirling.

For the first time, she allowed herself to think about it. Having a child. A child made of her and of Bucky.

Her heart skipped a beat. That child would have two of the most protective parents in the world, probably, and so many loving aunts and uncles. Maggie thought about her life and all the startling, impossible love she'd found in it, and thought about sharing that love with a child.  _Her child._ She thought about Bucky with a baby tucked into his arm, thought about Bucky as a parent. The image made her heart ache.

Maggie had never considered herself maternal, or even particularly sentimental. She'd also seen very few actual babies in her life. But this new, crazy thought had her heart pounding and swelling in her chest. She  _wanted_ this: this impossible, beautiful future.

Her Kimoyo bead pulsed against her chest and she hurried away to read the message.

From: Bucky  
 _Meg? I didn't scare you did I? Forget I said anything, it's not even within the realms of possibility right now, I was just… thinking. Never mind._

She shook her head at the message, picturing Bucky tapping away one-handed at a Kimoyo bead, frustrated with himself for daring to dream. She composed her reply.

From: Maggie  
 _I hadn't thought about it before. Ever. In my life. But I am now and… yeah, Bucky. I'd like a family. With you. I'd like it a lot._

It was a long, agonizing wait for his next message. She ended up going down to the gym to work off her sudden excess amounts of energy, and did her best to attempt to destroy one of Tony's super-soldier proof punching bags. The Kimoyo bead finally vibrated as she flipped through the agility course, and at the feeling she fell flat on her face on a foam mat. Not caring, she immediately pulled out the bead and activated it.

From: Bucky  
 _You and me, doll. One day._

She smiled, blinked away a few tears, and then wrote back with shaking fingers. She wished they could do this in person, wished she could hold his face in her hands and look into his grey-blue eyes as she replied.

From: Maggie  
 _One day._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter was a little shorter, sorry, but please don't forget to comment and let me know what you thought!


	75. Chapter 75

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies! Apologies in advance for any editing issues this chapter, I'm sick so my brain isn't 100% on board. Also side note – I have a cold, and as you may remember I moved to Japan recently, so I'm wearing one of those face mask thingies. I hate it, and it has upped my sympathy for the Winter Soldier and his face mask/muzzle.

 

April passed in relative quiet. Maggie and Peter met once every two weeks for a training session, where he impressed her with his growing tactical and strategic knowledge, and his quick thinking in combat. She suspected that in a few years Peter might be one of the most formidable Avengers. She told him so one weekend and he went scarlet, stammering something about he wasn't an Avenger. "Sure, Peter," she said, and left it at that.

Tony sometimes came to watch their training sessions, chiming in with comments that varied from supremely unhelpful to surprisingly useful. Tony knew more about what it meant to actually be an Avenger, after all, so he was the best one to tell Peter about working in a team and managing world-threatening events. Maggie focused on one-on-one combat, self-defense, and stealth.

Maggie had found herself the sudden owner of many responsibilities – HERACLES, her various philanthropic funds, her involvement with international agencies and organisations, and her engineering work. That kept her busy enough, but she still felt like there was something missing. She missed Bucky, of course, but there was something else. She felt like she wasn't doing  _enough._

So she went flying in her free time. She trained with her new wings, testing their limits and going for extended flights across the state (with F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help to stay hidden). She'd never been able to fly free like this, just her and the sky. She saw the sights that the state of New York had to offer, and a few times flew out to the ocean to marvel at the glinting, undulating ocean and the tiny ships below. Aside from a few near-misses with birds, she was never spotted in the sky.

Sometimes Vision came with her, and they flew together above the clouds. Once, she and Tony tested out their new gear by having a race across the length of the facility. Tony won, thanks to his stupid armor protecting him from stupid extreme g-forces. As she snarked at him and proved herself to be just as much of a sore loser as her brother, Maggie idly thought about designing some kind of suit that would protect her when she needed to go beyond a certain g-force, or if she found herself in extreme heat or in an environment with no oxygen.  _Something to think about_ , whispered the part of her brain that was determined to rebel against the Accords.

 

* * *

 

May 1st, 2017  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"Maggie, let's talk about dresses for the Incident Memorial event."

"Let's talk about what for the what now?"

Pepper looked up from her Stark Pad and narrowed her eyes. "Tony didn't tell you."

Maggie, reclined on the couch with her fingers wrapped around a PlayStation controller, stared. "I guess not."

Rhodey paused their game (she was beating him) and sighed. "Of course he didn't. In three days it's the New York Incident anniversary – five years since aliens came out of a hole in the sky."

Maggie put down her controller. "Oh."

"Yes," Pepper said, with a bite of annoyance in her voice. "I told Tony to tell you, but I'm not sure why I didn't realize that wouldn't make it through the haze of" – she made a flapping gesture with her hands – "science."

"So… there's some kind of event?"

"There's a memorial service in the morning in Midtown, run by the mayor. There's usually thousands of people there, and there'll be speeches, memorials, that sort of thing." Pepper bit her lip. "Normally it's also been an opportunity for the public to see the Avengers, but…" she trailed off, and Maggie sat back in her seat.

 _Right._ This would be the first Incident anniversary since the Avengers broke up. She thought about it, and realized that Tony would be the only Avenger in attendance who had actually been there at the Incident. The others were… who knows where.

Maggie closed her eyes. "This is going to suck, isn't it."

"Probably," Rhodey said heavily. "But I doubt anyone's going to bring it up. And Tony's not going to give a speech this year. It should mostly be focused on first responders and the victims."

Maggie pinched the bridge of her nose. "Okay. So what do I need a dress for?"

"Right," Pepper said. "After the memorial service in the morning the city is going to hold a gala celebrating the first responders – again, that used to be pretty Avengers-focused – and we've all got invites."

Maggie frowned. "Even me?"

"Even you. So you need a dress."

"Pepper, are you sure that's a good idea?"

"You're in the public eye now Maggie, whether you like it or not. I think it would be good for you to be there."

" _Why_."

"Well for one, it's always a good idea to network, especially since you're fashioning yourself into some kind of… philanthropist slash activist slash entrepreneur." Pepper raised her eyebrows at Maggie's grimace. " _And_  I know that we would all like to have you with us." Pepper turned to Rhodey, and he nodded.

"They're all gonna be pretending they don't see my exosuit, it'd be good to have someone there who doesn't treat me like a tragic cripple."

Maggie sighed. "Wow, you're really bringing out the big guns. Fine, I'll come."

"Great!" Pepper said brightly. "Well I assume you haven't put any thought into what to wear, then?"

"Jeans."

"No."

"Birthday suit."

Rhodey snorted and choked on air, but Pepper merely raised one fine, strawberry-blonde eyebrow, even as Maggie grinned and waggled her eyebrows at her.

"After everything your brother's said to me you're going to have to try a lot harder than that," she remarked. "I'll take a look at the options we have and come back to you later today. Alright?"

"Alright."

Pepper left, and Maggie turned to Rhodey. "Let's get back to the game. I'm about to treat you like a tragic gamer."

"Bring it on, Stark."

 

* * *

 

May 4th, 2017  
Novotel Hotel, Times Square, New York City

After a predictably sad, moving, and uncomfortable memorial service in the morning, in the evening Maggie strode into the hotel's gala ballroom with the last remaining Avengers and Pepper. Tony and Pepper went first, since he was the last original Avenger, followed by Rhodey, Vision, and Maggie.

When they entered the room, heads turned and conversation stopped. It was a huge space packed with people from socialites, to politicians, to emergency services personnel. Beyond the crowd, huge floor-to-ceiling windows showed a spectacular view of Times Square lit up like a neon wonderland against the night.

Maggie took a deep breath. This was her first big public function, if you didn't count being on trial for murder, and the feeling of so many eyes on her made her skin crawl.

The Avengers were dressed to the nines – Tony, Rhodey, and Vision wore tuxedos, which looked a little odd to Maggie, and she and Pepper wore evening gowns. Pepper had picked Maggie's out – a sleeveless floor-length burgundy dress with a neckline lower than anything she was used to wearing, but Pepper had reassured her that it looked great. It covered her back, which was more important. She wore heels, and realized that now she was probably taller than most people in the room (including Tony – he'd grumbled about it when they first got out of the car, but Pepper stood a good head taller than him in her own floor-length green dress and heels and he hadn't had anything bad to say about  _that_ ). Maggie's hair was pulled into a braided updo that had taken Vision an hour to do (he'd taken an interest in hairstyling since he started creating his own hair), and she wore makeup that she'd applied herself based on her espionage knowledge from HYDRA.

As she stood with the Avengers in front of what felt like all of New York, Maggie noticed  _looks_ being cast her way. She shifted uncomfortably, then lifted her chin and silently dared anyone to say anything about her choosing to look beautiful for once. No one did.

Then Tony said "hey Charles, how're you doing?" and the spell broke. Conversation sparked back to life throughout the room, and the Avengers began to mingle.

The first stranger who spoke to Maggie (or rather,  _saved_ Maggie, who had been wandering around with a lost look on her face) was a female fire fighter who complimented her on her dress. That started a whole conversation about the weird unspoken fashion rules of galas. It was  _girl talk_ , and Maggie felt sad when she was pulled away to talk to a senator.

As she circled the room, pulled into conversations with strangers and making awkward small talk with people her brother and the other Avengers seemed to know, Maggie had flashbacks to Tony's twenty first birthday. Back then she'd felt like she stuck out like a sore thumb, just a kid in the public eye forced to play a part.

Maggie wasn't all that good at diplomacy or hiding her true feelings (Pepper had to physically drag her away from someone who said "but really, should we meddle in human trafficking when American citizens aren't involved?"), but she tried her best. The politicians were a mixed bag, but she liked the socialites the least. They never had anything worth saying, and always seemed to be prying into her privacy.

Then there were the men who ogled. She'd never really understood the term  _ogle_ before, given that she'd never really attended this sort of event, but after the third instance of wandering eyes she was having a hard time not resorting to violence. She figured out a way to handle it though. She would narrow her eyes at the offender, thinking violent thoughts, and then they would remember that she was very nearly a convicted mass murderer and they'd scurry away. Her dress was a little revealing, but mostly what it revealed was the corded strength in her arms and the strong line of her shoulders. And her clenched fists.

She kept her back straight, comforted by the knowledge that her wings lay flat and dormant against her skin, and didn't let the wandering eyes or snide allusions to her trial get to her. Her brother had been dealing with this for a lifetime. She could handle it for a night.

Just as she had the thought, she heard Tony's voice. Sipping from a glass of red wine she'd snagged from a waiter, Maggie spun until she spotted him. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, speaking to someone who must be a senator, based on his neatly combed grey hair and the American flag pin on his tuxedo lapel. Maggie worked her way through the crowd toward them.

"– all I'm saying is, you can hardly blame us for being concerned. The Avengers have always been a bit of a wildcard, and with the state of their current  _shaky_ leadership…"

Maggie's eyes narrowed as she slid past a circle of socialites. Tony just smiled tightly at the senator.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Harold. And I gotta say, it's a shame that the LLC that funds your re-election campaigns is financially impacted by the Avengers' presence in San Diego, such a bummer they've been caught up in shady dealings with weapons dealers. But of course, you wouldn't let that impact your political decisions."

The senator sneered coldly, shifting his stance and broadening his shoulders so he physically stooped over Tony. Tony just raised his eyebrows, seemingly amused. "Stark, you can't pretend you have much of a hope of keeping your trio of oddities running for much longer than say, a year–"

The senator didn't get a chance to keep insulting Tony, because at that moment Maggie finally made it through the last knot of people and tipped her glass of wine over his shoulder, staining his fresh white shirtfront a deep red.

The senator swore and whirled around, his mouth opening to no doubt snarl out an insult. but when he saw who had done it he hesitated.

Maggie raised her eyebrows at her empty wineglass, then slowly let her eyes track back to the senator's face. "Oh, I'm so clumsy," she deadpanned.

The senator gaped at her, his cheeks flushed red and his eyes wide. Maggie just stared right back. After a long, tense moment, the senator muttered something unflattering under his breath and turned to walk toward the bathroom.

Maggie cleared her throat and carefully set her glass on a nearby table.

" _Maggie_ ," Tony said exasperatedly.

"What?"

He shook his head at her. "You don't need to throw your drink at anyone who insults me, Maggot. I can handle myself."

"I don't know what you're talking about, I tripped." Tony rolled his eyes, but couldn't quite conceal the small smile on his face.

She winked at him. "I need another drink. Do you think they'd look at me weird if I did shots? I want to show all these gross old men that I can outdrink them."  
Tony took her by the elbow. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but  _please_ don't do shots. Ugh, you're just as bad as me. C'mon, I'll get you a Long Island Iced Tea. That'll show 'em." He escorted her toward the bar. "By the way, Maggie, since I didn't say earlier – you look…" he waved his free hand at her, while not actually looking at her. "Nice."

She grinned at him. " _Nice_?"

"I'm trying something, don't shoot me down."

"Okay, okay. Thanks, Tony. You're not so bad yourself."

A camera flash nearly blinded Maggie as they made their way to the bar, and she resignedly realized that that photo would probably be splashed all over the papers tomorrow – she and Tony, arm in arm, grinning like they were thick as thieves.

There were worse cover photos, she supposed.

 

She and Tony mostly stuck together for the rest of the night. People seemed to be a little nicer to Maggie when she was by Tony's side (perhaps worried that Iron Man might obliterate them if they insulted his little sister), and Maggie was surprised at the amount of people who came up to say how pleased they were to see the Stark family reunited again, or to congratulate Maggie on the outcome of her trial. "We always believed in you," said one police officer, with a determined nod.

Of course, then some bright spark of a DJ decided to play an instrumental version of  _Can't Help Falling In Love With You._  The instant Maggie recognized the melody she froze up and lost track of the conversation she was in. Her mind traveled back to a dance hall in Darwin, to Bucky's steady hands and glittering grey-blue eyes. To her hand sliding across his shoulder and up his neck to cradle his jaw, to the nerves and joy pounding a rhythm in her chest.

"Maggie? What's wrong?"

She blinked at Tony's question. "Nothing," she gasped. "I'm going to go… be… over there." And with that she stepped out of the conversation and fled.

Tony called after her, concern in his voice even as he attempted a joke: "What, you don't like Elvis?"

Maggie knew she couldn't leave without making people talk, so she fled to the furthest corner of the room, where the wall met the window looking out over Times Square.

Without the words the song was sad, and sweet, and tugged at the deep ache in her chest. She touched the Kimoyo bead, tucked just below the neckline of her dress.

 _Meg, are you sure?_ He'd asked, sounding completely overwhelmed as his heartbeat pounded under her fingers.

 _Pretty damn sure_. She'd never been so sure about anything in her life than she had about that moment. Maggie touched her lips, and pressed her other hand to the cool glass as she looked out at the flashing lights of Times Square.  _Wish you were here._

She sighed. She'd tell him about this moment, when she got a chance to use the Kimoyo bead. It wasn't the same as having him here, not by a long shot, but she still  _had_ him. She'd tell him about how she'd heard the song and thought of their first kiss, fumbling and full of laughter, and then she'd send the message while picturing him in his little mud hut with its view of the lake.  _One day._

After a few minutes Maggie composed herself enough to mingle again, but she didn't bother trying to get along with people she didn't like any longer. Tony found her fifteen minutes later in the middle of a tipsy, raucously laughing group of police, fire, and ambulance workers, listening to their stories about weirdos they'd met on the job.

 

At the end of the night, Tony and Maggie found themselves alone on the roof of the hotel. with a brilliant view overlooking Times Square. Rhodey and Vision had left the event hours ago, but Tony for some reason had felt a compunction to stay.

"Are you okay?" Maggie asked, kicking off her shoes as she strode toward the balcony at the edge of the roof. Tony was already there, elbows leaning against the balcony and his face illuminated red by a nearby Coca Cola ad.

"Sure, why shouldn't I be?" he said distractedly, his eyes turned up to what used to be Avengers Tower. He'd undone his tuxedo a little, and Maggie could see the triangular blue light of his arc reactor shining through his undershirt.

She sighed and leaned against the balcony beside him. "Because five years ago today you saved the world, just a few hundred feet up there." She nodded at the dark sky. "And you didn't do it alone." She let the words hang. She didn't have to be too on-the-nose, there was a mural of the six original Avengers illuminated in neon on the other side of the square.

Tony's eyes dropped from the Tower and he turned to her. "I dunno, Maggie. A lot's changed in five years."

"I know. I'm alive, for one."

"A decided improvement." He smirked, then turned to look back out at Times Square. "Sometimes I wish…" his jaw clenched, and then he shook his head and sighed.

"What?"

He shrugged. "People used to hail us as this well-oiled engine of a team back then, because we came together and saved the world. But even then we were fighting amongst ourselves. We almost didn't work things out in time."

Maggie chewed her lip. "But you did."

"Yeah, and then we worked really well together for a time, but it just… When you've got a whole bunch of people who take the world on their shoulders, that's a heavy weight to bear. It all fell apart again." Maggie thought to herself  _it wasn't too much to bear when you carried it together_ , but she didn't say it, because that was a pain he didn't need. Tony spread his hands. "And now here I am."

"Here you are," she echoed. "What were you about to wish for just now?"

The corner of his mouth tipped up. "Maybe a second chance? For all of us."

She took in a deep breath. "That'd be nice." She cocked her head. "Do you think we'll get one?"

"I don't know. I hope so. I'm worried about what that second chance might mean for the world, though." He dropped his head, and Maggie could see that he was done talking about things still too painful for him to dwell on. " _Anyway_ ," he continued. "How was tonight? You're not too scarred?"

Her nose wrinkled. "People are  _confusing_."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She made an aborted gesture with her hand. "They shake their heads when they mean no, but sometimes they mean yes, and sometimes they don't know! And sometimes you're meant to know what people are thinking just from a look, and I don't, because no one ever taught me how. People never say what they mean, Tony, and it drives me freaking  _crazy._ " He was smiling at her, though he looked a little sad, and Maggie let the words she'd been thinking all night spill out. "I got taught how to be a person by a ninety seven year old recovering assassin who barely remembered how to be a person himself." Tony's face abruptly shuttered, but he didn't look angry. Maybe just startled that she'd brought it up. "I've picked up a lot from watching movies, and watching people, and just from goddamn context clues, but… the world is  _confusing_ , and that makes it terrifying. Sometimes I Just want to hide in my room and scream. I feel like an alien trying to assimilate."

Tony watched her with dark, empathetic eyes. "Well I think it's about time you found out…" he leaned in and whispered: "You  _are_ actually an alien. Mom and dad found you in a grounded UFO in 1986–" Maggie scoffed and shoved him, sending him stumbling half a step back with a laugh.

"You're such an asshole."

"Sorry, sorry. I'm sorry it's hard for you Mags, but honestly that's a problem you face as a Stark, not just as a recovering robot assassin. I didn't exactly have a normal upbringing, and I don't want to alarm you, but some people have told me that I can be  _offputting_."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Fine. We'll both be aliens then."

Tony raised his hand, holding his fingers together in an odd configuration – thumb out, second and third fingers together, fourth and fifth finger together. "Agreed."

"What are you doing with your hand?"

"C'mon, it's the Vulcan salute! Spock?"

"You're saying words, but I don't know what they mean."

"Are you telling me Rhodey hasn't shown you Star Trek yet? That's criminal. We're watching it as soon as we get back."

"Alright," she said with a shrug. "Hey, if the press doesn't clear out soon I could fly us a few buildings over and we could get out that way."

Tony shot finger guns at her. "I like the way you think, Spock. Live long and prosper."

"What?"

 

* * *

 

New York Times Headline:  _Stark Solidarity: the Iron Avenger and the Wyvern pay their respects at Battle of New York 5_ _th_ _Anniversary Memorial Event._  (picture: side-by-side images of Tony and Maggie laying lilies at the shrine to victims of the Incident. The image is accompanied by a photograph of them at the gala event, Tony in his sharp tux with his jaw set, and Maggie in her deep red gown with a look of determination in her eye).

 

* * *

 

May, 2017  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

A few weeks later Maggie found herself in the Avengers operations room, helping a pair of analysts with their investigation into a weapons-dealing anarchist group that had some pretty high tech gear. She showed the agents new ways of tracking custom parts for weapons that wouldn't appear on any legit sales records, dimly aware that she and the analysts were not alone in hunting for this group – at some point the group (the  _Weaponeers_ , they called themselves) had gotten serious enough to warrant becoming the Avengers #1 Most Wanted (well, aside from the fugitive Avengers. But Maggie wasn't going to help find  _them_ ).

In the end it was a series of small mistakes that led to the accident.

The first mistake was Maggie being in the operations room to begin with, but it had become so normal for her to be in there helping out with one case or another that no one thought twice about it. Second was her not paying attention to the situation as word came in of the Weaponeers about to attack a government complex in Zanzibar, and the investigation suddenly became the start of a mission. Third was Tony and the other Avengers forgetting that she wasn't supposed to be in the room. Fourth was the agent who (though they were technically doing their job), approved a holographic call from the Accords Committee to get permission to run the mission.

Maggie didn't take note of these compounding mistakes until she looked up from leaning over someone's computer to hear Secretary Ross's booming voice.

"What the hell is your sister doing there, Stark?"

The room fell silent. Agents in the middle of obtaining vital intel for the mission looked up from their screens to glance from the holographic projection of the Accords Committee, including a visibly incensed Secretary Ross, to a deer-in-the-headlights Maggie. The other members of the Accords Committee frowned at her, and the Avengers glanced at one another in panic.

"She's been helping track the Weaponeers," Tony eventually said, breaking the silence. The agents and analysts in the room turned back to their work, very studiously not looking at the hologram. "She's the best digital tracker we've got, Ross, we wouldn't have half the intel we have now if not for her."

"That's not a goddamn answer," Ross snarled. "You know very well that she's not approved to be a part of Avengers operations.  _Everyone in that room_ knows that." All around the room, analysts exchanged glances. "So please explain to me why apparently everyone on the Avengers staff is comfortable with breaking the Accords?"

"We're sorry sir," Rhodey said, stepping up because Tony looked like he was about to say something he'd regret. "We should have done this the right way. But this mission is going down  _now_ and we need to get clearance–"

Ross waved a hand. "You've got it, Zanzibar's begging for the help. You can suit up."

Another man on the Accords Committee spoke up. "What about these" – he looked down at his notes – "'electronic scramblers' that the Weaponeers have?"

Vision stepped forward. "The Weaponeers are equipped with advanced and highly powered weapons, and it appears that each agent is also equipped with these scramblers – each one gives the user immense capacity to hack into and corrupt nearby digital systems including surveillance cameras, electronic finances, security measures, and potentially even the Iron Man and War Machine armors."

Another committee member frowned. "That seems like a problem."

"I will attempt to disrupt the scramblers," Vision said, "though we are uncertain of their effect on me. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will also do her part, assisted by the analysts back here at the facility – they've had some practice locating and shutting down the scramblers, but not much. If we are unable to combat the scramblers digitally then we will have to track down each agent and destroy their devices manually."

"And you think you'll be able to do this?" Ross said.

"We're about to find out," Tony said, clearly itching to get moving. "This heist is going down really soon, Ross, and we don't know how long it'll be until they surface again. Those scramblers make tracking them nearly impossible."

Ross narrowed his eyes, but after exchanging a glance with the rest of the committee he nodded once. "Alright, go. And get your sister out of the operations room, we'll talk about that later."

Maggie, who had been standing frozen by the analyst's computer for the duration of the conversation, blinked. "I should stay," she blurted out.

Activity in the room slowed to a crawl once more as everyone turned to look at her. In the holographic projection, Ross put his hands on his hips and scowled.

"Oh I can't wait to hear this," he said. His cold eyes were fixed on her, narrowed as if he could see into her very soul. Maggie suddenly remembered that the last time they'd been in a room together had been during her trial.

She straightened, rolled her shoulders back, and eyed the committee. "This is a rush job, and the Avengers don't know how to deal with the scramblers yet. Vision will do what he can, but he'll be in the thick of the fight. F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s great for dealing with electronic interference, and she's great for mass amounts of data and hard facts, but – no offense, F.R.I.D.A.Y. – she's geared towards the artificial. These are  _people_ you're dealing with – the Weaponeers agents are lethal with those scramblers, they decide what they're going to mess with and they know how to do it with the worst consequences. That's a level of unpredictability that not even the smartest A.I. can handle. Once they attack they could take down the whole economic structure of Zanzibar, they could take down the whole continent's online world, they even could work their way to United States financial structures. F.R.I.D.A.Y. can try to take them on, but at the end of the day you need a human mind to combat a human mind. I've done more study on these scramblers than anyone, I can  _help_ here." She took a breath, staring at the committee. "Let me help."

Ringing silence followed her words. Tony watched her with a knitted brow and a thoughtful look on his face, but he couldn't conceal his worry.

Ross leaned forward to place his hands on his holographic desk. "Leave the room, Ms Stark."

After a few more moments of silence, Maggie's eyes flicked to her brother – his expression now pinched with annoyance – then turned on her heel and walked out. She felt every eye on her back as she did.

She didn't go far once the operations room door slid closed behind her. She threw herself into the nearest seat and stewed, feeling like a scolded student sitting outside the principal's office. She resisted the urge to tear something apart.

Half a minute later the Avengers burst out of the room, no doubt on their way to suit up. Tony nodded to her.

"Gotta go, Mags. You okay?"

"I'll get over it. Be safe, okay? Remember, the neural uplink for those scramblers connects to each agent at the back of the skull – if you want to stop them using the scramblers to mess with stuff you've gotta disconnect that cord. Or blow their head off."

He grinned and swooped in to kiss her cheek. "Noted. And thank you for trying to stay, I know you don't like those guys."

"They should've let you stay," Rhodey said, his face stormy.

"Never mind, just go," Maggie said. She didn't want to start a war between the Avengers and the Accords Committee. They nodded and said a quick goodbye, then ran down the corridor toward the hangar. Maggie sank back into her seat and sighed. Her brother and her friends were off to save the world (or at least part of it) again, and she was left to… sit here. On the annoyingly comfortable grey waiting room chair outside the operations room. She let her head thud against the wall behind her.

 

To her surprise, ten minutes later an agent she knew – Brett Williams – ducked his head out of the operations room door and spotted her sitting there.

"Oh good, you didn't leave. You can come back in Ms Stark, the Accords Committee just called back to approve hiring you as an analyst for this mission."

She sat up straight. "Are you serious?"

"Yes! Now come in, we need your help. Martins has no idea what to do with that isolation algorithm you were programming."

Maggie didn't need any more convincing. She sprang to her feet and darted into the room after Brett, waving to the analysts who looked up and grinned to see her coming back in. She jogged to Martins' desk and took his holographic screen out of his hands, flicking her algorithm back into order. "You have to anchor this section to the root of the digital scrambler's entry point," she said by way of hello. "Give me updates?"

"Right. Avengers are en-route, they'll be there in…" Martins leaned back in his chair to look at the mission coordination screen in the central hub of the operations room. "Just over an hour. That'll be just as the Weaponeers start their attack, if our intel is right."

"It is," Maggie said distractedly. "Right, Kathleen?"

The agent who'd uncovered the initial tip gave Maggie the thumbs up. "My guy's got good intel."

"Okay," Maggie said. "An hour. That gives us plenty of time to plan our attack on the scramblers. Who's on the team to deal with that?" Maggie, Martins and the other analysts in the immediate vicinity looked to Agent Asfour, the head of the Avengers Intelligence and Analytics Division, where she stood in the central hub.

Agent Asfour heard Maggie's question and looked over. "With the rush this has put us in I haven't assigned anyone yet. Who do you want?"

Maggie blinked. "Who do  _I_ want?"

Asfour rolled her eyes. "You said it yourself, you know more about these scramblers than anyone. If we're going to need a team of analysts working to combat them electronically as well as F.R.I.D.A.Y., you should be the one picking your team."

"Right." Maggie rattled off a list of names – she'd worked with all the Avengers agents and analysts, directly or indirectly, so she knew who she could rely on to have the technical knowledge to handle the threat the scramblers faced, in addition to having enough interpersonal intuition to be able to out-think the human minds behind the scramblers. Asfour nodded, and all of a sudden Maggie found herself heading a team. She didn't have time to think too much about it though, because she had less than an hour to work out how they were going to take down the Weaponeers' equipment from over 7000 miles away.

In the back of her mind she turned over the Accords Committee's sudden change of heart, but she didn't really have time to think about that either.

 

The Avengers landed in Zanzibar just as the Weaponeers' attack began, and in seconds the fight became a loud, chaotic blur of data, explosions, and shouts. The Avengers transmitted video and audio feeds back to the facility, and analysts eyed the feeds in the central hub with trepidation. The Weaponeers packed a  _lot_ of firepower.

Maggie didn't have much time to watch the feeds – she and her team fought a battle of their own, remotely looped in to Zanzibar's internet so they could combat the destructive force of the scramblers. The scramblers were a tsunami of data, corrupting and downloading and uploading all at once, wreaking havoc on any systems around them - from cameras to bank accounts to WiFi to traffic lights.

Maggie found herself shrouded in a cascading canopy of holographic data, turning and flicking and twisting her hands in an attempt to simultaneously reverse the damage and block the Weaponeers from the most sensitive areas. The blue light illuminated her whole body, her eyes focused and her brain moving mile a minute. Her feet stood in New York, but her mind was thousands of miles away.

Her team quickly got the hang of it. She and a couple of other analysts identified the slowest-moving Weaponeer and remotely hacked into his scrambler, letting out a whoop when they initiated a fatal shutdown.

"Alright, that's one!" called an analyst named Bartlett, and they all switched from celebrating to turning their focus on the dozens of other Weaponeers.

"Hey Asfour," Maggie called, once she'd managed to isolate each scrambler's frequency and put them on a geographical map. She flicked the map up to the central hub. "This should help speed up the process. But see those three yellow dots? Those scramblers have some kind of enhanced defense mechanism, I don't think we can crack them from here. They're likely to be the leaders."

"Got it," Asfour replied. "Stark?"

"Yeah?" Maggie replied, and at the same time Tony's voice came over the comms: "What's up, buttercup?"

"Dammit, this is why we have callsigns." Asfour looked over her shoulder at Maggie, who frantically waded her way through the digital explosion of data as a Weaponeer tried to go after Zanzibar's citizen record system. "You good with 'Wyvern'?"

Maggie took half a second to throw a thumbs up at Asfour and went back to handling the scramblers.

"Great. Iron Man, it seems three of the Weaponeers have higher-powered scramblers than the others – we can't shut them down from here, think you might have a shot? I'm sending their locations to you now."

"Sure, these things are making the suits kinda haywire but they can't shut us down completely. Wait, Wyvern? Is Maggie there?"

Maggie snatched a comms unit up from a nearby desk and snapped: "Focus!"

Tony didn't bring it up again, so it seemed he'd got the message.

Maggie watched the central hub screens out of the corner of her eye as she worked, watching Tony, Rhodey, and Vision converge on the three yellow dots and unleash everything they had. The Weaponeers didn't last long. The last one managed to freeze Vision up like a marionette doll for few seconds, but then Tony blasted a unibeam through the connecting wire between the Weaponeer's head and his scrambler, and the yellow light on the map blinked out.

With their leaders gone, it was a losing battle for the Weaponeers. They managed to cause a little more mayhem on their way out, but soon enough Maggie and her team fried the last Weaponeer's scrambler just as War Machine punched him square in the face.

Maggie gasped in relief, sweat pouring down her face, and collapsed into a nearby swivel chair. The sound of the Avengers celebrating poured through the audio uplink, and taking that as their cue the operations room full of analysts let out a cheer, clapping each other on the back and grinning. Maggie smiled and looked around at her team's flushed faces and white smiles.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she looked up. It was Agent Asfour, her normally stoic face bearing a slight smile. "Well done, Wyvern," she murmured.

"Thanks. Not so bad yourself, Asfour."

"Stop flirting."

Maggie rolled her eyes at the woman, and the senior agent walked back to the central hub to get started on cleanup.

 

Maggie helped out with cleanup, trading jokes with the other analysts (often at the Weaponeers' expense). A few of the analysts asked her questions about certain techniques she'd used in infiltrating the scramblers, and how she'd figured out certain things, so she readily taught them. Ten minutes later Asfour came across Maggie surrounded by a group of analysts as she drew a diagram of the scramblers' power relays (despite never having seen the relays before), and raised two pointed eyebrows.

Maggie blinked. "Right, cleanup." She and the other analysts scattered and got back to work.

 

* * *

 

The Avengers returned just as they began to finish up the cleanup from the mission. A team of analysts would be sent to Zanzibar tomorrow to help on the ground, but Maggie wasn't going. She was just clearing a few things up with a member of the Zanzibar team when the operations room door slid open, admitting a tired-looking Tony and Rhodey in their underarmor suits, followed by Vision.

Tony's eyes zeroed in on Maggie on the far side of the room, and he hurried over. "Please tell me you didn't sneak in," he said by way of greeting.

Maggie gave him a hug. "I didn't," she replied. "Apparently the Accords Committee approved me helping. Which I'm wary of, but I wasn't exactly going to say no. I'm glad you're okay."

Rhodey came over, his brow knitted as if he wanted to say something, but he was beaten to the punch by the agent manning the central hub of the operations room:  
"Incoming call from the Accords Committee!"

Maggie's heart skipped a beat and she glanced at her brother. His eyes narrowed and he turned to Rhodey.

"What do you think they want?"

"It's gotta be about Maggie," Rhodey replied. "Can't be good."

Vision had approached during this quick, whispered conversation, and met Maggie's eyes. "Would you like to leave?"

She swallowed, glancing from Tony and Rhodey's hissed whispers to Vision's concerned gaze. She sighed. "No. Let's do this." She turned to the waiting agent and nodded.

A second later the Accords Committee materialized in the central hub; seven men in suits and military uniforms etched out in blue light. They sat around a flickering blue table, but as they saw that their call had been accepted, an Air Force general at the head of the table stood up and nodded.

"Avengers." Ross remained silent and seated, his dark eyes narrowed in Maggie's direction.

The Avengers returned the greeting, and the general shifted his stance.

"We've received an initial report on the mission from Agent Asfour, we're pleased that the Weaponeers went down without too much local damage." Something in his face shifted. "The report also indicates that Ms Stark's skills were integral to the success of the mission."

Maggie didn't visibly react to his words besides looking over her shoulder at Asfour. The woman shrugged at her, then turned away to get back to her work.

"We won't publicize your role, Ms Stark, since the Accords don't require Avenger non-combatant's identities to be released."

Maggie blinked. "Okay."

Ross leaned forward, eyes still narrowed. "We've also been made aware that you've acted as an analyst for the Avengers on multiple other occasions."

Maggie didn't let his threatening tone get to her, and when Tony opened his mouth she shot him a quick glance to get him to shut up. This was about her, she didn't want anyone taking the fall for her – especially not the three Avengers anxiously hovering behind her. "That's true," she replied.

There were a few long moments of silence as Ross and Maggie held each other's gaze. The rest of the Accords Committee watched her closely with something assessing in their eyes.

Finally, Ross spoke. "We've received numerous recommendations from Avengers staff," he continued. "There's a public audit of the Avengers coming up, so we need to make sure this is all above board and we need to do it now–"

She frowned. "Make sure  _what's_ above board?"

Ross turned to his fellow Committee members and they shared a look, as if she was being particularly dense. Something like mutual understanding flickered between them.

Ross turned back to Maggie and met her eyes. "This is a job offer, Ms Stark." Her eyes widened. "If you accept you'll be an Avengers analyst, under Agent Asfour's supervision. If you don't accept, then if we catch you in this operations room again – which we will – we won't hesitate to prosecute you to the fullest extent that the Accords allow." As her heart pounded, Maggie recalled the dark, shifting corridors of the Raft. Ross leaned forward. "Do you accept?"

She blinked when he finished talking, so taken aback at their entire conversation that she could only open and close her mouth.

"Maggie…" came Tony's voice, and she glanced over at him. He didn't say another word, but his eyes told her everything he wanted to say: he wasn't comfortable with her falling further under the Accords Committee's thumb than she already had. Her gaze drifted, taking in the worry in Rhodey and Vision's eyes. They worked for the Committee themselves, but it was clear they didn't want her to accept this 'job'.

And yet.

Maggie bit her lip and looked down at the floor, considering Ross's offer. With official recognition as an Avengers analyst not only could she help people, but she could help her brother and his friends survive the dangerous job they'd taken on. And she had to admit that what she'd done today, though exhausting, was  _thrilling._ Not quite fun, because of the imminent-destruction-of-large-parts-of-the-internet thing, but today she'd been able to use her brain in a way she hadn't in a long time. A way she was  _good_ at.

Her gaze flicked up. She liked the operations room with its odd mix of people, she liked working with them to solve problems and stop the bad guys. And Ross was right – she'd end up in here sooner or later, whether she agreed to the job or not.

So she took a deep breath, looked up, and faced the hologram. "I accept."

Breath hissed between Tony's teeth, but Maggie didn't take her eyes off the Accords Committee as they exchanged glances.

"We'll send the documents through to you in the morning," Ross said, though his tone said  _I hope you choke on air and die._ He leaned back in his seat. "Look at that, Ms Stark. You're an Avenger."

Then the call disconnected, and the Accords Committee blinked out of existence.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone else notice that in Infinity War, the Accords Committee that Rhodey talks to is all men? Like c'mon.
> 
> Also, just for fun I'm going to remind everyone there's a "The Wyvern" playlist on 8tracks and YouTube:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyEFm4fuH4ox7nFl_XoMYkOLrZlAOics
> 
> https://8tracks.com/emmagnetised/the-wyvern


	76. Chapter 76

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise early update! And it's a long one!
> 
> Next chapter will come on Friday as per usual.

 

Tony and the others fired a dozen questions at Maggie once when the Accords Committee disconnected, all concerned about her giving up more of her freedom without hesitation. But once she'd explained her reasons, they grudgingly agreed to go along with her. Maggie was certain that if she hadn't agreed, she'd end up in the Raft sooner or later for illegally meddling with Avengers affairs.

"Besides," Maggie said as they walked back to the Avengers common room, "my last job was fixing up cars in… Bucharest, I think. Yeah. This'll be a big step up for my resume!"

Tony rolled his eyes at her.

 

When Pepper heard the news her brow furrowed and her eyes darted over Maggie, as if checking for signs of brainwashing, but she didn't try to talk her out of it. Instead, she offered to look over the contract when it came in the morning.

 

* * *

 

Before Maggie could start her new job she had to pass certain training requirements. Avengers analysts were technically agents, not civilian administrators, so they had to fulfill quotas for physical health and fitness, drug tests, and low level self-defense and weapons training. Pepper had looked over the contract and tried to argue that it was clear Maggie would pass all the requirements and should be given special consideration, but the Committee was firm in going by the book (they did have that audit coming up after all).

So Maggie went through fitness checks from Dr Cho, jogging on a treadmill to measure her heartrate, and proving that she could do the required amount of situps and pushups. When she hit one hundred, Dr Cho recorded the pass and looked up.

"Out of curiosity, how many more do you think you could do?"

"I dunno," Maggie said, climbing to her feet. "I think we'd be here a while if we wanted to find out though, and I've got to go pee in a cup."

Cho nodded. "I don't see why they're bothering. If you are doing drugs they'd go through your system too quickly for me to pick up on a urinalysis."

Maggie shrugged. "They're just doing it to remind me they're in charge. If checking my urine is how they want to assert their dominance, I'll let them have at it." That earned one of Dr Cho's rare smiles, and Maggie left with a laugh.

Agent Asfour oversaw the weapons training, in which the instructors explained everything to Maggie that they were required to, then Maggie disassembled and reassembled each weapon in seconds and fired three perfect shots into each target.

Analysts also had to go through a week-long self defense module, but the Accords Committee had been willing to replace that with a 'combat test module' so the process wasn't dragged out. When Asfour saw that module in Maggie's file, her brow creased and she looked up.

"Did you ask for this?"

"They said that was the only way they'd speed up the process," Maggie explained. "And you guys need me in for that deep sea transmission case tomorrow, right?"

Asfour frowned down at her StarkPad. "We do. But did they explain what this module requires?"

"No, it just says 'combat test', right? What does that mean?"

Asfour raised an eyebrow. "Means they want to beat the shit out of you."

 

* * *

 

A few hours later, Maggie found herself in one of the training rooms connected to the Avengers gym – a wide space with a padded floor and many slots and hooks for creating obstructions to fit different training scenarios. But today the room was bare, and Maggie stood in the middle dressed in sweatpants, sneakers and a workout shirt, armed with nothing but her bare fists. Her wings were with her, as always, but she'd been instructed not to use any enhancements.

She wasn't alone. The entire Avengers Strike Team Alpha stood around the edges of the room; ten elite agents from S.H.I.E.L.D. or other agency backgrounds. The collection of men and women in dark blue tactical suits stood straight-backed against the walls, their eyes on Maggie and their faces blank. She had gotten to know them while living at the facility, but she knew they wouldn't go easy on her. They knew just how dangerous she could be.

It turned out 'combat test module' meant 'try to hold your own against the best agents in the facility aside from the Avengers'. Scoring was based not on whether you were able to beat them, but how long you lasted before you were beaten. Maggie wasn't entirely sure what the Accords Committee wanted from this, but she didn't plan to play mind games with them. She'd complete this module like she'd completed the others.

Maggie looked up to the observation deck where Agent Asfour, Tony, Rhodey, and Vision stood. Tony stood right against the door of the deck, his arms folded across his chest and his expression dark. He'd been furious when he found out about the combat module, saying that the Accords Committee were putting her through her paces like a prize racehorse instead of an analyst. Rhodey and Vision had been frustrated too, and offered to talk to the Committee for her. But Maggie told them all that she wasn't letting the Accords Committee's pettiness get to her – if this was the worst they could do to unleash their frustration, she figured she'd be alright.

The Avengers didn't need to be here to witness the module, and they'd offered to stay away in case she was nervous, but she didn't mind. She'd just had a session with Mai to talk about using violence in a restrained way, and she was in a good headspace – all that stood between her and the first legitimate job in her life were ten highly-trained agents.

Asfour hit a few buttons on her StarkPad, then cleared her throat. "The module has begun."

At her words, the strike team moved. They didn't instantly attack, just closed the distance around her and circled, keeping her attention split and moving. Maggie lowered her center of gravity. Waves of anxiety emanated from the observation deck but she blocked it out – she knew her brother and the others felt worried, but she didn't. She took long, slow breaths, focused on every soft footstep and movement around her.

One of the agents (a woman named Heidi who Maggie had spoken to a few times) slipped into Maggie's blind spot, thinking that the more formidable-looking Agent Moreland had captured Maggie's focus. Heidi stalked up behind Maggie on silent feet and waited until Agent Moreland broadened his stance threateningly - and then she struck.

Maggie allowed her lips to twitch before she whirled around, caught Heidi's fist, twisted her off balance and swept her legs out from under her. Heidi hit the floor with an  _oof_ , and the others all attacked at once.

The Wyvern's icy focus slipped over Maggie, and she got to work.

 

The Avengers watched from the observation deck as Maggie sprang into action. Within seconds, Tony's arms uncrossed themselves and he found himself moving towards the edge of the balcony to stare. The strike team had Maggie circled and outnumbered, but when they rushed her she leaped well above their heads, negating their advantage and putting them on the inside. She was lightning fast, jumping and sliding and weaving around them. Each strike and dodge was calculated, efficient.

The strike team were the best of the best, and they'd fought enhanced people before. They got a few hits in; precisely aimed strikes to Maggie's ribs, head, and knees, but the blows seemed to roll off her. One of the agents actually managed to get Maggie into a hold with his arm around her neck and her arm twisted up behind her. But Maggie gripped the arm around her neck with her free hand, kicked her legs up high in the air and then slammed them down, using the momentum to pitch herself forward and throw the agent over her shoulders and to the ground. She followed up by flipping on top of the agent and punching down at his throat, stopping just before making contact.

"Dead," she murmured, voice perfectly calm, then spun sideways to dodge the next agent's attack.

Tony clung to the observation deck's railing, stunned. And if the quick glance he took at Rhodey and Vision was anything to go by, they hadn't quite been expecting this either. Rhodey's eyebrows climbed his forehead at a rapid rate, and Vision seemed fascinated by the fight where before he'd been a reluctant viewer.

Tony had known that Maggie was capable of this, he'd heard all the court testimony and had seen images of the aftermath of the A.I.M. base, but this was different. He'd never seen Maggie fight like this, efficient and powerful and absolutely relentless. For a moment the two different versions of her in his head jarred against one another until he realized that they were  _both_ Maggie – dorky, intelligent, witty Maggie was the same Maggie who could throw an agent bodily into the wall and then take out another two with a dizzying somersault kick. The room echoed with the sounds of sharp breath, staccato shouts of pain or aggression, and fists on flesh.

The way Maggie fought reminded Tony a little of the way Natasha did – lightning fast and twisting – but those lithe strikes were mixed with the way Steve fought – acrobatic, ruthless, with a devastating amount of power.

The fight felt like it lasted hours, and yet Tony also felt like just a few seconds had passed before Maggie threw the last agent to the ground. The man actually bounced a little before coming to rest with a groan.

Maggie stood there with her fists clenched and her head cocked as if waiting for new attackers, her chest rising and falling. The sudden stillness after the explosive fight was disorienting.

After a few more seconds, something in her seemed to shift – her muscles loosened, her hands unfurled from fists, and her stance shifted from one of combat into one that reminded Tony a little more of the Maggie he was used to. With an exhale, Maggie relaxed and paced across the room to one of the agents slumped against the wall.

"Sorry man," she said, "I felt like I kicked you a little too hard there, you okay?" The agent looked up breathlessly, a bewildered look in his eyes, but at seeing her open, guileless face he shook his head and let her haul him to his feet.

"I'm all good," he replied. "But I'm glad you're on our side."

Maggie grinned a shark's grin at him. "Me too."

A female agent on the other side of the room rolled onto her back, one hand pressed against her ribs. "Why the hell are you going into a desk job, again?"

Maggie's gaze flickered, but then she shrugged and replied: "To see more of Agent Asfour's sunny smiles, of course." She looked up at the observation balcony, and at the sight of Asfour's unimpressed eyebrow raise she grinned.

Maggie's eyes darted to Tony, a little more warily, and he tried to wipe away his look of stunned disbelief and replace it with something encouraging. He wasn't quite up to speaking yet. Maggie's eyes dropped away.

"That was awesome!" Rhodey exclaimed, clearly not suffering from Tony's speechlessness. Maggie's gaze darted back up and she grinned at his enthusiasm. "Seriously, that was… damn, Maggie."

"I concur," Vision said, "Very well done."

She shrugged.

"Alright," Asfour interrupted, "Anyone need to go to the med bay? And don't be martyrs about this, you just got your asses kicked."

A few agents laughed and raised their hands, before helping each other to their feet and heading for the med bay. Asfour tapped away at her StarkPad for a second, then turned to leave.

"Wait, is that it?" asked Maggie, hands on her hips.

Asfour turned back and raised another eyebrow. "You really think you might've failed just now?"

Maggie shrugged again.

"You passed," Asfour said with an eyeroll. "You're hired, Agent Stark."

Maggie's nose wrinkled.

"Yeah, I didn't like it either," Asfour said. "Still good with Wyvern?"

"Yep. Or Maggie, but I feel like you're not gonna call me that."

"Good instinct. Go get your kit from requisitions, Wyvern."

Asfour walked out, and Maggie fell into conversation with the remaining members of Strike Team Alpha. Tony turned to Rhodey and Vision, and reached up to rub his jaw.

"Well," he said.

"Well indeed," Vision replied.

"C'mon," said Rhodey, nudging Tony toward the door. "We've all got work to do."

 

Rhodey and Vision went to their meeting with a senior Air Force general to negotiate the Avengers' use of airspace, and Tony went to go to his workshop, but Maggie caught up with him in the corridor.

"Hey," she called, jogging toward him. She was still sweaty from taking down the strike team, and he noticed a bruise forming on the corner of her jaw where Agent Moreland had got a hit in.

"Hey," he replied.

"Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be okay?"

She planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him. "That's not an answer. Back in the training room, you looked…" her face flickered, revealing something hurt and ashamed for just a millisecond. "I know it's… unsettling, but I swear I was in control the whole time–"

"I know, I know," he hurried to say, and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not scared of you Mags, it's just…" his brow knitted. "Sometimes I forget, that's all."

Her face was carefully blank. "Forget that I used to be a weapon?"

"No, I forget that you're a secret ninja. You're such a dork most of the time, that's why I forgot."

The tension left Maggie's face and she rolled her eyes. "Let's not pretend you're a helpless damsel in distress either," she said. "I've seen you fight."

"In my wearable tank," he pointed out.

"Nah, you're not fooling me. You know how to fight." Tony didn't reply, and she shoulder nudged him. "Are we good?"

"We were never bad." He flashed her a quick smile – he'd let her think he thought less of her for being dangerous, and he wouldn't let it happen again. "By the way, since you now work for the Avengers I expect you to call me Boss at all times–"

"Not a chance," she replied easily, and they turned to walk down the corridor together. "Though you're right, we're technically co-workers now – is that weird?"

"Super weird. You're fired."

Maggie kept talking as if he hadn't said anything. "We need to keep it professional – codenames only, and obviously we'll want to look out for each other but I'm not going to give you any special treatment, and I don't want any special treatment from you. Or I'll beat you up."

"Are threats of violence really professional?" he mused, hands in his suit pockets.

"You're saying you've never received any threats of violence in a professional setting?"

Tony thought about it. "Right." He scratched his beard. "Alright, so this is a thing now. What the hell."

Maggie lifted her hand and curled it into a fist, knuckles facing him. He looked up at her, affronted.

"Are you trying to fist bump me?"

"Well since my fist's already out, you'll be the one doing the bumping. The bumper, as it were."

"I hate everything about this."

"C'mon, Tony, be a team player!"

With a look of disgust on his face, Tony pulled his hand out of his pocket and knocked his knuckles in to hers. He shuddered. "I think I just felt my dignity spiraling away."

"Ah yes, all that dignity you had. You'll be so different now it's gone."

"You're fired."

 

* * *

 

That day, Maggie officially became an Avengers analyst. She became one of the dozens of people striding through the facility halls in the dark blue Avengers uniform, one of the many hard workers in the operations room, with a desk and case load of her own. She sat in on meetings with the Avengers to give them intel, sent reports to the Accords Committee, and investigated criminal activity the world over, assessing threats and preventing attacks.

It took her a while to get used to to the flow of the work, which went from tedious trawling through data to the lightning-fast chaos of a mission. Part of Maggie's job involved assisting on the Avengers' comms while they ran missions. She ended up getting that job more and more often because she was a skilled tactician with field experience, and because she could sometimes get Tony to do what she said. She was able to multitask and change plans on a dime, easily keeping tabs on each Avenger's location and role in the mission.

She was surprised and only mildly disturbed by how useful her past with HYDRA was to her job. In her second week on the job the Avengers went after a group called Zodiac; terrorists interested in chemical weapons. The group was still small but had the potential to get very nasty, and a senior analyst had flagged them for immediate attention. Zodiac was excellent at staying under the radar and infiltrating organisations – it was almost as if they'd modeled themselves after HYDRA. But Maggie knew that game, so she was able to put herself in Zodiac's heads and figure out how to take them down (send an Avengers agent in as a double agent, then use that intel to lure the group into a trap by using a rare and dangerous chemical as bait – Zodiac overextended themselves, and the Avengers swooped in to dismantle them).

Maggie also made friends amongst the other analysts, who didn't seem too intimidated by her background or genetics once she started wearing fluffy socks with bunny ears on them in the operations room.

She didn't tell Bucky about the details of her missions because she'd signed a confidentiality contract, but he knew about her new job and had written a long letter saying that as long as she was sure the Accords Committee wasn't trying to manipulate her, he thought the job was perfect for her and he knew she'd be great at it. He told her stories about the intelligence agents he'd known in the war, and how the Howling Commandos would've been screwed without them. Maggie loved his war stories (the ones that weren't sad, at least), and she asked him a million questions about code breakers and spies and Bletchley Park until he admitted that he'd been too busy worrying about Steve and his stomach and the dampness of his socks than about catching up with famous people.

 

* * *

 

May 22nd, 2017  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

"Ms Stark, you are required in the operations room."

"Mmfff." Maggie rolled over in her bed and blinked blearily up at the ceiling. "S'time?" Yesterday was her day off so she'd flown to Maine with Vision, and come back thoroughly exhausted.

"0500," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied smoothly. "Agent Abbasi's investigation into recent Middle Eastern political upheavals have returned intelligence of a terrorist occupation in a desert area of Turkmenistan. Given the presence of advanced firepower, explosives, and a civilian presence in the area, NATO and the Accords Committee have chosen to send in the Avengers instead of troops – the Quinjet is already on its way. Agent Asfour has requested all mission analysts to report to the operations room."

Maggie had climbed out of bed and pulled on her uniform as F.R.I.D.A.Y spoke. "Alright, tell her I'm on my way down."

 

When the Avengers flew in to Turkmenistan, Maggie was right there on comms. It seemed that a terrorist organisation had quietly taken control of a whole region, taking out political leaders, extorting corporations, and sabotaging major infrastructure.

As the Avengers entered the airspace above the captured zone a volley of ground-to-air missiles shrieked through the sky, only avoiding the Quinjet thanks to the pilot's quick thinking.

"So their scanners are better than we thought," Tony remarked wryly, and dove out the back of the Quinjet to go after the missile launchers.

"War Machine, Vision," called Asfour, "we've just received intel that terrorists are raiding a school in the area – see if you can draw them out and away from civilian areas."

"Affirmative," Rhodey replied, and Maggie glanced up at their video outputs as they flew out the back of the Quinjet. She got a view of a flat, sprawling city surrounded by desert, and then the footage focused in on a large building that must be the school, crawling with men in sand-colored tactical suits. Maggie's lips pursed and she turned back to her holoscreen, where she was monitoring communications in the area.

"Iron Man," she called into the comms after five minutes in which Vision and Rhodey had managed to draw most of the terrorist forces out into the desert on the edge of the city. "I'm seeing a lot of these communications being funnelled back to what looks like the ruins of the old city. I'm guessing that's where this group is based."

"On it," came Tony's voice, and after an explosion lit up his visual feed he rocketed back into the air, blending sky and sand together. Maggie eyed his feed, aware that her intel had just isolated him from his teammates and sent him into an unknown area. Iron Man soared over the modern city and toward the sandy, crumbled ruins of the ancient one, flying over the eerie-looking structures stranded amidst the sand and scrub.

"Boss, scans indicate heat signatures in the mausoleum," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, and Tony came to land in front of a remarkably intact stone building with a dome, just beside an empty road. Maggie kept half an eye on his feed as she worked - she was sure that Tony and F.R.I.D.A.Y. had it handled, but something uncertain prickled across the back of her neck. On the other screens, she could see Vision and Rhodey doing what they did best: luring terrorists out of their hiding spots and taking them out.

Iron Man's footsteps crunched on the sand as he approached the mausoleum. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., what am I – huh." He stopped walking as a steel door affixed to the mausoleum entrance swung open. Maggie straightened in her chair. The door swung open slowly, and out stepped… a single man.

Her eyes narrowed. The man seemed totally out of place in front of the ancient mausoleum – he was a refined-looking older guy with neatly combed white hair and a long face, wearing a Kevlar vest over a neat grey suit.

"Mr Stark," called the man over the three hundred feet between them. "I wondered how long it would take them to send you."

Maggie's heartrate picked up. The man didn't sound nervous, or brash. He sounded curious.  _Something's wrong._ She kept Tony's feed up over her desk but immediately pulled back to look at the wider situation – Vision and Rhodey simultaneously working to take on the heavily armed terrorists and evacuate civilians, the Avengers strike team backing them up. Heat signatures showed that the well-dressed man wasn't alone in the mausoleum, but the fifty-some people inside didn't appear to be inclined to attack Iron Man or help their (presumable) leader.

"Well when you try to build yourself a dictatorship you tend to draw attention at one point or another," Tony pointed out mildly. A wind blew in from the desert, kicking up sand between them. From the feed from his suit, Maggie could tell that Tony was also frantically trying to work out why the man was so calm.

"I'm aware," the man replied, sounding almost bored. "This isn't my first time. And I've learned that people and regimes fall when they become  _predictable._ The Avengers, Mr Stark, are predictable."

"Right, you do something bad and we come to stop you?"

"Exactly."

Maggie's heart beat faster with every word the man said. He believed, totally and completely, that he was in control of this situation even with Iron Man knocking on his door.  _Think, Maggie._

She looked up from her screen. "Asfour!" the woman looked over. "Something's wrong, these guys aren't rattled. They've got something else up their sleeve."

"Hear that everyone? Keep an eye out for anything strange!"

"I might have something strange," called Agent Kudaka, two desks behind and to the right of Maggie. She got to her feet and pulled her holoscreen over to Kudaka's desk. Kudaka continued: "I'm monitoring first responders, and they put me on the phone with this cop – he's handling a report on the other side of town from the fighting, in a commercial district. F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s translating for me but it's slow going, he says he found something strange so I asked him to take a photo and – ah, it's coming through now."

(Over the comms, Maggie heard the well-dressed man say: "We are not aliens, nor do we have visions of dominating the world. Leave us to our small corner of the Earth and we will not use your predictability against you." Tony scoffed and replied: "You see that, that's a really predictable bad guy thing to say.")

An image appeared on Kudaka's holoscreen: it appeared to be a shopfront with brightly colored rugs and stacks of round woven hats. A man's hand pulled back a dusky purple rug to reveal a large, gunmetal grey case about the size of a washing machine. It would have looked unassuming if it weren't for the unusual placement, the hints of wires that Maggie spotted poking out the back, and the fact that she  _knew_ this design. She'd been trained how to make a case exactly like that from one of her HYDRA instructors in the early 2000s. She felt as if she'd been plunged into icy water.

" _Shit_ ," Kudaka breathed.

Maggie touched Kudaka's shoulder, hissed "brief Asfour," and turned back to her holoscreen. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., get the local law enforcement to evacuate the building and surrounding area, as far as they can." She brought up specifications for the building, a grand old structure with a blue dome, filled with stalls and surrounded by residential buildings.

"Will do, but there's only a few officers in the area."

Maggie reached up to activate her comms just as the well-dressed man said:

"Surely you don't still believe in  _bad guys_ and  _good guys_ ," he sneered at Tony. "How reductive of you."

"Avengers," Maggie called, her voice thrumming with urgency, "there's a bomb in the bazaar two clicks east of the main fighting. Tony, keep that guy talking – I'm sure he's in control of detonation and the second you attack or he gets bored, people are gonna die. Vision, War Machine, you've got to get over to the bazaar and evacuate people, it's…" she checked the cameras in the bazaar. "Jesus, it's packed." It was a busy Saturday in Turkmenistan, and despite the local troubles it seemed the bazaar was a refuge, filled with hundreds of shoppers. Maggie changed screens and watched a pack of children weave through the crowd with grins on their faces.

"But we–"

"This bomb will take out that whole building and at least the three surrounding blocks, they've been distracting you. Whoever these people are, this is their warning for trying to come after them. F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s communicating with local law enforcement to get the evacuation moving but it's not going to be enough. Get over there  _now_."

The Avengers did as she said: Tony kept up the conversation with the well-dressed man and Vision and Rhodey rocketed across the city.

Tony's voice came over the comms, his helmet soundproofed so the well-dressed man couldn't hear him: "I've called in a satellite bomb containment unit, it'll be here in five minutes." Then he went back to trying to keep the man engaged.

Maggie dimly noted that the already-busy operations room had burst into action around her, Asfour turning everyone's attention to clearing civilians and cutting communications so the well-dressed man didn't find out about the Avengers discovering the bomb. A new level of tension crackled through the air, and Maggie wondered if everyone else in the room was hiding their panicked breathing and gut-clenching terror behind a grim face, like she was.

Kudaka's police officer had already managed to clear the floor that the bomb was on, so Maggie hijacked one of the CCTV cameras and zoomed in on the bomb itself, now unobscured by oriental rugs. She couldn't see much, but she channeled the feed to Vision and told him everything she knew about that design of bomb while she flew. This wasn't an amateur construction, this design took expensive and hard-to-get materials and expert construction. It was near impossible to even crack it open without detonating it, let alone disarm it.

Vision and Rhodey arrived at the bazaar two minutes later and got to work. Vision phased through the walls of the building to get to the bomb, and she watched through his visual feed as his fingers danced around the edges, trying to find a way to open it or phase through it without setting off any tamper sensors. She checked on the bomb containment unit, streaking through the atmosphere like a missile: still three minutes out.

Rhodey frantically cleared civilians out of the building with F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help, once or twice grabbing civilians from the upper floors and flying them out the window to the ground below.

On the outskirts of the city by the ancient mausoleum, Tony kept trading conversation with the well-dressed man. He lightly entertained the possibility of leaving the group to their headquarters in the ruins of the old city, but he trod a fine line of plausibility. The well-dressed man was right: the Avengers were predictable, and if Tony agreed to leave the terrorists alone then the well-dressed man would get suspicious.

"I gotta say, I agree with you that our talents might be a bit wasted out here," Tony told the well-dressed man, waving expansively at the desert. "No offense, but you guys seem like small fish. What are you guys doing here anyway?"

The well-dressed man's eyes were flat and cold. "This region allows certain opportunities that other areas of the world do not. Chaos, upheaval. Plenty of opportunities for success for people like us."

Maggie's heart pounded against her rib cage. She turned back to Vision and Rhodey's feeds. There were still people in the bazaar, and the situation had devolved into a mess: people screamed and ran in all directions, and though the strike team had moved in to help there were still far too many people too close to the bomb. The team was stretched too thin, what with Tony semi-negotiating, Vision working on the bomb, and Rhodey and the strike team agents attempting to keep control over a panicked evacuation.

Sitting in her swivel chair thousands of miles away, Maggie felt an overwhelming rush of helplessness flood over her. There wasn't anything she could do to help. She watched civilians flood toward the nearest exits and get stuck in bottlenecks, and though she was able to point out to the agents on the ground that there were additional exits at the back of the building, they couldn't get through the crowd to guide people in that direction.

Maggie sat at her desk, and watched.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement on Tony's feed. It was the well-dressed man. After another exchange of barbs with Tony, he reached up to tap something small in his ear:  _a comms device._

Maggie held her breath. They'd managed to cut all comms, so the man couldn't have heard anything. But perhaps that was what brought on the sudden suspicious gleam in his eyes.

"What's it to be, Iron Man?" he said in a new, sharper voice. "Will you clear out your forces, or will you attack?" He spread his arms. "I'm right here."

"Wyvern," Tony hissed into the comms, soundproofing his helmet so the well-dressed man couldn't hear him. "There's gotta be a way to disable his detonation device, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. can't detect any broadcasts. Can you do anything?"

"Not from here," she said, her heart twisting. "It's not radio or celltowers, I can tell that much, but these guys have some serious tech so it could be anything. You could try taking him out but there are fifty other people in that mausoleum who…" she cut herself off. She knew she was just telling Tony what he already knew. "I'm sorry," she murmured, and her own helplessness carved out a hollow empty space within her chest.

On Vision's feed, she watched him cut out a section of the top of the metal casing to reveal a forest of wires.

"Vision, progress?"

"It's a complex structure, I am sending you scans and attempting to find a defusal method, but–"

"The bomb containment unit's thirty seconds away, but we don't know what tech they've got in that bomb so it might not be enough–"

"Listen," Tony said to the well-dressed man, taking a few steps forward. "You seem like you've got a better knowledge of this area and situation than I do, so how about we cut a deal? We negotiate your organisation's ownership of this area, and in the meantime you sign a few non-violence treaties. Compromise, right?" He kept walking forward.

"Stop right there," the man replied coldly. Tony stopped. "You are predictable, Mr Stark. You don't  _cut a deal_ with people like me. You seek them out, and you kill them. You protect the hordes of 'innocent civilians' from people like me."

Maggie's stomach flipped over. "Vision–"

"I believe I nearly have it," Vision replied.

"No, Vision–"

"But I am not predictable," the man continued. "ARES is not predictable. So the only way you can protect people from us is to  _stay away._ "

With a piercing sound as it plunged through the sky, the satellite bomb containment unit finally descended on the bazaar and punched through the roof. Vision's feed showed the missile-shaped projectile blossom into a metal dome, growing over the top of the bomb case and burying beneath it, surrounding it with blast-proof red and gold metal.

Maggie looked back to Tony's feed. The well-dressed man looked from the streak the there-and-gone bomb containment unit had left in the sky to Tony with a snarl on his face, then lifted his arms and  _clapped._

"No!" Tony cried.

For a millisecond silence reigned. But then, her eyes fixed on Vision's screen, Maggie watched as the bomb containment unit buckled at the seams and, all too fast to register, the feed whited out. Rhodey's screen erupted with bright orange flame and as one the CCTV feeds from the bazaar dissolved into static. Half a second later came the noise: an all-consuming roar that nearly overwhelmed the operations room speakers, booming across the space and thudding in Maggie's chest. She flinched and shielded her gaze from the bright flames on the remaining video feeds, her mouth falling open and her stomach plummeting.

In the central hub of the operations room the grim-faced Agent Asfour switched to the feed from the Quinjet in the sky over the city. At the sight of the feed, analysts across the room gasped. Hundreds of feet below the Quinjet a fireball rolled up from the bazaar building and a cloud of dust pushed outward, obscuring the ground. Maggie stared at the blossoming, angry flames as a feeling of cold numbness crept up her limbs and into her chest. When the initial roar of the explosion passed, the comms filled with screams and the sound of collapsing concrete.

"Vision, report," Agent Asfour called into the comms. There was no response, and all his tracking information had been knocked out by the blast. Maggie's heart damn near stopped in her chest.

"War Machine, report."

"I'm here," came Rhodey's voice. " _Damn it_." His feed hadn't gone down, but it was a mess of flickering flames and smoke. He groaned, and Maggie realized that he was pushing a slab of concrete off his armored legs. "I think I got everyone out, but… I'm gonna go through, see if I can find anyone. Vision, where the hell are you?"

"I'm here."

Maggie let out a breath and blinked at the sudden well of tears in her eyes. Vision sounded disoriented – well, as disoriented as an android could be, but he was alive.

"I absorbed a great deal of the blast," Vision continued. "I believe I am about a mile away from the bazaar."

"Injuries?" Maggie asked.

"Nothing I won't be able to repair," he replied. "Iron Man?"

"I'm at the bazaar," came Tony's grim voice, and Maggie's eyes flicked to his visual feed to see him pulling scorched and wailing people away from the outskirts of the exploded building. It was chaos, with thick black smoke filling the air and the building still on fire.

"What about the guy?" Rhodey asked, pushing through the collapsing building in his armor.

"Got away," Tony bit back.

Back in the operations room, Maggie got started on sending in the Avengers rescue and relief teams, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that her bones ached. She swallowed down a sick feeling that she thought might be failure.

 

* * *

 

By some miracle, there were no fatalities in the bombing. That was the only good news. There were hundreds of injuries, many of them serious, and dozens of people in the area lost businesses and homes. The bazaar ended up a crater, filled with broken concrete and burned and twisted metal. A few of the terrorists were apprehended, but most had escaped while the Avengers focused on the bazaar – it seemed the explosion had been part warning, part escape tactic. And it had worked.

As Maggie helped to coordinate the medical aid, she couldn't help but think  _this could have been so much worse._ Tony's bomb containment unit hadn't been strong enough to contain the tech-heavy bomb, but initial projections showed that without it the blast radius would have been blocks further, and would definitely have sustained fatalities.

And yet:  _this could have been so much better._ If they'd just had more time, more resources, more people, more intel… each time Maggie went down that line of thought she had to shake herself, because the 'what if's would eat her alive.

The Avengers returned from Turkmenistan disheartened and angry. Vision was physically charred, parts of his chest and legs scorched away to expose wires. Silent fury hung like a storm cloud over Tony, and Rhodey just seemed sad. And tired.

Maggie tried to help, but none of them were ready to talk about it. She buried herself in work.

 

* * *

 

From: Bucky  
 _Heard about the Turkmenistan explosion. I know you can't tell me anything about it, but how are you doing?_

From: Maggie  
 _Thank you for asking, Bucky. I'm… stressed at the moment, and everyone's all reclusive and frustrated. We were so close to losing so many lives, and that terrifies me.  
I wanna kick these people's asses._

From: Bucky  
 _I don't doubt that you will, and I'll be cheering for you when you do x_

 

 

* * *

 

May 23rd, 2017  
Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

The next day, on the way to the meeting room adjoining the Avengers common room, Maggie reviewed the news coverage of the Turkmenistan explosion. The coverage was mixed, most outlets reporting that the Avengers had successfully evacuated civilians and contained the brunt of the blast, though some media groups argued that wherever the Avengers went, explosions followed, and that standard troops should have been sent in. The Avengers were more trusted now that they were regulated, and the fact that it had been the UN's decision to send them in mitigated the blame, but Maggie was very aware of the rocky ground they trod. The last time public perception had shifted toward the Avengers, it had led to most of the team going on the run. She didn't know if the team could survive another big mistake.

She put away her StarkPad as she entered the meeting room, her brow creased. She took her seat at the mahogany table and glanced up. Everyone in the room looked grim: the holographic Accords Committee calling in from D.C., all three Avengers, Strike Team Alpha, Agent Asfour and a few analysts.

"Alright," Ross said, seeing that everyone was assembled. "Let's get started. What the hell happened yesterday?"

Agent Asfour stood. "The man Iron Man engaged with at the mausoleum gave a name: ARES. We've been working all night gathering intel, and we got a hit early this morning." She pulled up a holoscreen with the name ARES bolded across it, accompanied by pictures of a team of people in tactical suits, and a collection of reports and files. "ARES is made up of members of a defunct NATO strike force. Got a little too invested in the areas they were deployed in and decided to defect. They've been working behind the scenes for political powers in the Middle East; they're mercenaries."

"And now they're upgrading themselves to despots," Tony cut in, his tone as cold as ice.

Maggie looked over at him and frowned.

"And their leader?" asked Vision, who had managed to repair himself overnight.

"A guy named Emil Tessler," said an analyst beside Maggie. "NATO physicians were considering diagnosing him with Borderline Personality Disorder, but he defected before they could make the call." Maggie's eyes drifted to Tony again. He appeared outwardly unconcerned, fiddling with a pen, but she could see the anger glittering in his eyes.

An Accords Committee member looked up from the files. "This says the original strike force only had fifteen members. How come there's so many of them now?"

"They've been recruiting and training in the area for a while," sighed Rhodey.

"It's true," Asfour affirmed. "We've had reports of heavy recruitment in the area but we didn't link it to ARES until last night." The holoscreen changed to include images of the agents the Avengers had engaged with yesterday: they wore sand-colored tactical suits with green and white vests covered in weapons, spare ammo, and grenades. They each carried a large rifle, and wore white helmets with red visors.

"And the bomb?" asked another Committee member.

Maggie stood up. She'd been tasked with looking into the bomb, with Vision's help. "The bomb itself was far more powerful than we'd anticipated – I did some digging, and apparently ARES has been messing with old S.H.I.E.L.D. tech." The people in the meeting exchanged glances. "The bomb containment unit managed to mitigate a good amount of the damage, but we're working with seriously heavy duty explosives here. The bomb itself is based on a classic bomb design originally used for higher-end stuff like corporate sabotage and warfare, and I don't doubt that ARES learned how to make it during their time in NATO. Because of the sheer amount of separately-rigged explosives inside the bombs, the best way to disarm it is to deactivate the detonation relay."

She paused to make sure everyone was following, as she flipped through Vision's scans of the bomb to illustrate her words. "The detonation device was electronic. Tessler must have had a pressure sensor on his palm that once it was activated pinged a digital program that instructed the bomb to detonate. Disrupting a signal like that is difficult but not impossible, but it looks like they designed this bomb to start a detonation timer if it lost the signal from the remote detonator."

"What does that mean?" asked an Air Force General.

"It means you could remotely prevent ARES from activating the bomb, but that would trigger a countdown to detonation." She cleared her throat. "Disabling that timed detonation sequence would require physical access to the detonator  _inside_ the bomb, which from the scans looks like it was pretty heavily shrouded in booby traps. So disarming it would require deactivating the all traps around the detonator, then attempting to stop the countdown without causing a fatal shutdown. It'd be painstaking."

"I was close to disarming it," Vision said, touching his chest. "It's a supremely difficult design though, with hundreds of failsafes and tamper sensors. I couldn't have phased through it to disarm it. The bomb design is intended to make one  _think_ that they are close to disarming it, only to trick them into triggering a detonation relay."

"And you think they'll have more of these?" Ross asked.

"Tessler is obsessed with control," Maggie replied. "This bomb and all their other tech allowed him to exert his control over  _the Avengers_. Yes, I think he'll use them again." She allowed her words to sink in, then continued. "But he also wouldn't shut up about how unpredictable he is, so I'd prepare for them changing up their style – they'll use different kinds of tech, add new traps to their bombs, try to outthink us."

Another Committee member, a prominent Senator, spoke up. "And you think that ARES will appear again?"

"We do," Rhodey replied, leaning forward. "They might not be in control of that area any more, but there's signs of ARES activity in other areas in the region. They'll be back."

"Alright," Ross said. "Keep tracking them, and keep us apprised. We're handling the press situation and it's steady for now, but don't make a single move until we approve it with all the relevant governments first." He seemed to take the silence following that order as acceptance. "Meeting dismissed."

Everyone got to their feet, and Maggie managed to catch Tony's eye. She cocked her head at him, a silent question:  _how are you doing_? He shrugged and looked away, but a little of the tension left his face. Maggie sighed.

Ross's voice cut through the murmuring as people headed for the door. "Ms Stark, would you please stay behind?"

As one, everyone stopped moving. Maggie, suddenly round eyed, looked up at Ross's holographic projection. His eyes were on her, as were the rest of the Committee's. She swallowed. "You want me to stay?"

"Yes," he replied, eyes cold.

"Sure you don't need  _us_  to stay?" Tony asked lightly. Maggie looked over at him and took in the tension in his frame. The others in the room seemed poised, wary.

"That won't be necessary," Ross said.

Tony turned to Maggie, a silent question in his eyes.

Maggie bit her lip. Whatever Ross and the rest of the Committee had to say to her, she was sure it couldn't be good. But they weren't  _really_ here, and she was still determined not to start a turf war within the Avengers. She sighed and tipped her head at Tony.  _Clear out._

His jaw clenched but he did as she asked, filing out after the rest of the team. Vision touched Maggie's elbow on his way out, a silent reassurance.

Suddenly alone in a room with holographic men, Maggie straightened her spine and set her shoulders. "Secretary Ross," she acknowledged with a nod. The Accords Committee all sat around their holographic table, considering her. It felt strange to stand before them in her Avengers analyst uniform, though she had to admit the uniform made her feel safer.

Ross leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "Yesterday was almost a disaster."

"It  _was_ a disaster," she said, a furrow in her brow.

He waved a hand. "Yes, but not the kind I meant: I mean the kind of disaster in which civilians die, and the world turns against the Avengers. The kind of disaster we've seen before."

Maggie thought about the news headlines she'd seen about Wanda's mistake in Lagos, and about her own concerns before the meeting had started. "Well that didn't happen."

"No, but it was close. And do you know why it almost happened?"

Maggie met Ross's intelligent, holographic eyes. There was a mutual understanding there, and the thought chilled her. "There aren't enough of them," she murmured.

"Exactly. We've discussed this," Ross said, gesturing to the other Committee members. They nodded. "Three Avengers is a lot of power, but this world is filled with big threats. And I wouldn't necessarily call ARES a big threat – a bunch of two-bit ex-government thugs, greedy for land and power." He paused, watching Maggie closely. "If a group like  _that_ can almost bring the Avengers to their knees, what would a big threat be able to do?"

Maggie's thoughts darted as she contemplated his words while simultaneously trying to understand why they'd asked to speak to her alone. The realization hit her like a blast of icy air, and her breath caught in her chest.

Her eyes snapped back up to Ross. He hadn't taken his eyes off her; always measuring, assessing. Her gaze traveled across the rest of the men in the Accords Committee. They looked back with their decision clear in their faces. "You want me in the field," she breathed.

"Not full-time," Ross replied, his voice level. "You'd be on-scene as backup if things go sideways, only for missions where a great amount of risk is accepted."

She took a step back. "You'd trust me with that?"

"It's not about trust," Ross replied with a wave of his hand. "It's about resources. We're aware of your skills, and it's a waste to keep those behind a desk."

Maggie managed not to flinch at the word  _waste,_ like she was just an asset or a weapon again, but her shoulders tensed up and her eyes narrowed.

An Air Force general continued: "You've informed us that the trigger words are no longer an issue. We're also aware that you've built new wings for yourself. Those would be valuable in a mission."

Her heart pounded. She'd thought she was being so clever.

" _And_ we're aware of your involvement in the A.I.M. takedown," Ross continued, his eyes cold. Maggie's stomach flipped over.  _So Crowe did tell them about her._ "We're not trusting you, Ms Stark. We're making a deal."

She straightened her shoulders and took a breath, determined not to negotiate from a place of fear. Even though they already had enough evidence to throw her into the Raft. "A deal?"

"You, in the field in a back-up position as the Wvyern," Ross said. "You'll need to sign the combatant contract of the Accords, which will require you to obey each directive from this Committee. And if you break those Accords–"

Maggie waved a dismissive hand. "The Raft, I get it. I'm bored of you threatening me, Ross."

The Accords Committee members exchanged glances. Ross laughed lowly. "Good to know you're aware of the consequences you face. But if you mess this up, Stark, it's not just you that goes down. The rest of the Avengers will be delegitimized, stripped of their power. Who knows, maybe they'll end up in the Raft as well." His eyes narrowed, trained on her with laser precision. When he was sure that she understood he got to his feet and walked around the table, talking as he paced: "this is an opportunity, Ms Stark, to use your skills for the people of this country and the world. I don't care what you think of me, but for now our interests are aligned. And I think this is something you've wanted for a very long time." He came to a stop just a few feet away from her, his hands clasped behind his back and his shoulders straight. "So what do you say?"

Maggie closed her eyes. They hadn't even bothered to threaten her in case she decided to turn them down this time. Because they knew they didn't have to.

She opened her eyes and looked up. "I say yes."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a bomb expert, and I'm really hoping the CIA doesn't come after me for all these google searches about bombs and explosions that I've been doing.
> 
> Also, all these villains I've been making up (the Weaponeers, Zodiac, ARES), I've based on villainous groups from the comics. I haven't read the comics, but I trawled through Marvel wiki pages for a bit to get these. So I apologize if they're not accurate, but I still wanted to base this story in canon :)
> 
> See you all on Friday!


	77. Chapter 77

 

"You're doing  _what_?"

Maggie sat on one of the leather couches in the Avengers common room, her knees tucked under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs. "I'm joining you on missions in a back up capacity."

Rhodey, Vision, and Pepper sat on couches around the cozy, mahogany-and-book filled room, but Tony was pacing around with a panicked look in his eye. "You're doing  _what_?"

"Tony," Pepper sighed. "You heard her."

"But… she–" he gestured wordlessly at Maggie, his hair askew.

"I think what Tony's trying to say," Rhodey said, leaning forward in his seat and leveling a serious look at Maggie, "is  _why_? Maggie, you've spent your life fighting. Are you sure you want to jump back in so soon?"

Maggie took a deep breath. She knew they'd do this. "That's the thing, Rhodey, I spent my life fighting  _for HYDRA._ Helping you guys isn't the same thing at all."

"You mustn't let guilt dictate your life," Vision cut in softly. "No one can demand your skills of you."

She sighed frustratedly and unwrapped her arms from around her legs, dropping her feet back to the floor. "You don't get it, this isn't about HYDRA. I'm not doing this because of them, and I'm not doing it because the Accords Committee are manipulating me into it, I'm doing this because…" She leaned her elbows on her knees and looked around at the people in the room with her: Tony, still pacing back and forth behind Pepper's chair like an angry cat; Vision and Rhodey frowning at her looking for all the world like concerned brothers; and Pepper's cool, judgement-free gaze.

"I'm doing this because… look, let's be honest here and admit I've got a bit of a complex about helping people. Not the worst complex to have, but still. Even in a back up role I can help so many people in so many ways – I can protect civilians, make sure they never have to feel the kind of fear I felt when I was five years old and alone. I can help you guys, because there are  _three of you_ trying to save the world." She took a breath. "And I can help  _me_ , because I've been searching for something to do, something that makes me feel like I'm using my life well, and I think this is it. The advocacy and the philanthropy and the analysing data are great, don't get me wrong, but  _this_  is something that only a very few people can do. It's something that I can do. And I'm going to do it well."

Tony stopped pacing about halfway through her speech, and when she fell silent she looked to him first, because his opinion was the one that mattered in the end. The others would accept her choice, but Tony was the one clouded by overprotectiveness and fear. She knew he wanted to keep her away from the Accords and the Avengers as much as he could, because he knew better than anyone how dangerous it could all be. But she'd faced danger her whole life.

Tony stared back at her, his dark eyes pinched with fear. But she knew he'd been listening. After a long moment, in which she looked straight into his eyes and thought  _please_ , he sighed and folded his arms across his chest. "Alright," he murmured through gritted teeth, and rolled his eyes at the grin that crossed Maggie's face. " _Alright._ It's a stupid idea, but it's not like I've been able to stop any of your stupid ideas before."

"That's the spirit," Rhodey said, leaning back in his chair with an eye roll.

Maggie turned to him and Vision. "What do you say, guys? How do you feel about having me on your six?" This was their team, and despite what the Accords Committee said it was up to them to decide who they wanted to work with.

Vision turned to Rhodey politely. Rhodey gestured to himself. "Who, me? Uh,  _yeah_ , I've seen you fight. And I'm not too proud to admit we need the help." Tony shot him a sideways look and he shrugged. "Maggie's right, she can do this."

Maggie smiled at him, and then they all turned to Vision. He looked down at his clasped hands.

"It seems to me that to become an Avenger is not to pass some test or to sign a document," he said thoughtfully, and his eyes flicked up to Maggie's. "It is to step up and do the right thing when the right thing must be done. And Maggie, you have proven yourself of that time and time again. I'm certain I speak for Mr Stark and Colonel Rhodes when I say welcome to the team." His eyes warmed, and a smile crept across Maggie's face.

"Thank you, Vis," she said softly.

Tony watched on thoughtfully, his eyes tracking first across his team; Vision, Rhodey, and now his sister, and then to Pepper, who watched him with a small smile on her face. Damn it, she always knew what he was thinking. He shook off the rush of sentimentality and planted his hands on the back of Rhodey's sofa.

"Alright, you're an anointed Avenger. So how does this work? Sign on the dotted line, then jump on the Quinjet for the next mission?"

"Basically," she replied with a shrug. "Though the Accords Committee said they'd decide which missions I get sent on."

"What about training?" Pepper asked. "They required a lot for you to be an analyst, what do they want you to complete this time around?"

"Those  _assholes_ ," Maggie replied as she slapped her hands down on her sofa. "said that the combat module I did apparently already qualifies me as a combatant."

Tony stiffened. "They always meant to send you into the field."

"Looks like it," she replied, glowering. "Manipulative assholes. As for all the other stuff like weapons checks and strategy training and team simulations, they said they'll run checks while I'm on the job. But no, I don't have to jump through hoops this time around."

"I don't trust them," Pepper said, because she wasn't Avenger and it wasn't tantamount to treason for her to say it. "Are you sure it's a good idea to play right into their hands?"

Maggie dropped her head back onto her sofa headrest. "I don't know. The alternative is saying no just for the principle of it, but I want to do this." She sighed. "Ross said that 'for now our interests are aligned'. I think he was telling the truth."

"And when your interests aren't aligned?" asked Vision.

She shrugged. "What happens to any of us, then?"

A few long moments of silence passed. Maggie couldn't bear to look any of them in the eye, so when the silence got too much to handle she stood up. "I've, uh… I've gotta go pick up my kit from requisitions and sign the contract." She turned to go, then hesitated and turned back. "Thank you, guys. For trusting me. It means a lot."

"We should be thanking you," Rhodey said. "Thanks for stepping up, Maggie. You didn't have to, but we really appreciate it."

Vision nodded solemnly, and Tony yawned.

"We needed a girl on the team anyway," he said.

Maggie scowled at him, though she was sure he could see the smile she was trying to hide. "You're an idiot."

"You're fired," he replied cheerily. "Go on Maggot, go get your stuff. We'll be here."

 

* * *

 

From: Maggie  
 _So.  
_ _You know that job I got a couple weeks ago? I might've gotten promoted._

From: Bucky  
 _Promoted? You're a senior analyst or something? That's great doll, I'm really proud of you. Did you get a pay raise? I'm looking to become a trophy husband._

From: Maggie  
 _You have to be good looking to be a trophy husband._  
And… no. I might actually be an Avenger now. Well not might. I… am. A back-up Avenger. A maybevenger.  
It was the Accords Committee's idea. They're manipulative and I know if I stick even a toe out of line they won't hesitate to ruin me, but I've got to do this, Bucky. I think you more than anyone will understand. This is the mission.

From: Bucky  
 _I understand. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm not really worried about you right now, because the idea of you going out without me watching your back is terrifying. But I know you're with a team you can trust, and… I guess I saw this coming. You've never been able to stand by.  
_ _I know you know what you're doing, but just keep your guard up. In the field, and back home. I don't trust those Accords Committee bastards.  
_ _I love you._

 

* * *

 

May 29th, 2017  
Herat, Afghanistan  
On Tony's birthday the Avengers got a lead that ARES had been sighted in the sweltering, sprawling city of Herat.

Instead of reporting to the operations room, Maggie went straight to the flight hangar in the standard issue Avengers agent outfit: a dark blue tactical suit. She'd cut two slices in the back in case she needed her wings, and fitted a new pair of nanotech energy blasters to her wrists, disguised as bracelets. The tactical suit felt familiar; the Kevlar blend felt strong against her skin and she found she could breathe a little easier, but the flashes of blue out of the corners of her eyes startled her. She'd spent most of her life in a uniform much like this, and she was startled to find how much it felt like a second skin.

The Avengers flew with Strike Team Alpha on the main Quinjet, but Maggie flew on the backup Quinjet with another cohort of Avengers agents. The flight to Herat was tense, as Maggie helped the Avengers plan their attack and coordinated with the analysts back at the facility. When they landed mostly everyone left to filter into the city, but Maggie remained on the Quinjet with the backup team of agents, working on comms and on a holographic map of the city.

It was a tense wait in the air conditioned Quinjet, watching her brother's team ( _her team_ ) ghost through the city and surround the potential ARES hideout. It was a long, blocky building built in the local sun-dried mud brick style, with a few sentries posted around it and across the roof.

Maggie paced the length of the Quinjet, taking her holographic overlay with her as her eyes darted over all the feeds from Avengers, agents, and security cameras she could locate. She was just a couple of miles away but she still felt frustratingly helpless. Awareness prickled along the back of her neck and into the nanoparticles stretched across her back, making them tingle and shift. At any moment the Avengers could call  _deploy backup_ , the signal for her and the other backup agents to leap out of the jet and into action. She didn't know if she was ready.

"Commence contact."

War Machine kicked down the door, Vision phased through the roof, and Iron Man blasted through a window on the other side of the building. Maggie balled her fingers into fists and watched the noise and chaos that followed.

 

Five minutes later, Tony blasted a gun-wielding ARES agent into a wall and called: "That's the last of them. Let's clear up here."

Maggie let out a breath and dropped into a seat next to one of the other backup Avengers. She wasn't sure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

 

* * *

 

"It was just a small outpost," Rhodey reported to the Accords Committee that afternoon. "Tessler and his team weren't there, the outpost only had a limited number of men and a small cache of weapons. The bulk of ARES is still out there somewhere."

"And what's more," added Maggie grimly, still in her tactical suit, "ARES got wind of the raid and they retaliated." She brought up a photograph of a bombsite a few miles out of Herat, a warped and mangled building with smoke still curling from the ruins. "This used to be portable hospital, funded by an Avengers relief organisation. Fighting moved out of the area two years ago but there were still three on-call staff members inside, and four patients." Maggie brought up images of each civilian; five women and two men, smiling at the camera. One man was forty seven, the exact age Tony had turned today.

Maggie let her eyes rest on the faces. "They're all dead."

Silence followed. Tony stared at the holographic faces of the bombing victims, a dark intensity to his eyes that promised nothing good. Vision's eyes were closed, and as she watched Rhodey his eyes dropped away, a look of sheer exhaustion on his face.

An Army general in the committee cleared his throat. "What do you intend to do next?"

As one, the Avengers turned to Tony. He balled his hand into a fist and sat up straight in his chair.

"We don't stop. Next time we go after ARES we go for the throat: we find their main base of operations and take down every single one of them until there's no one left to hit the detonator."

"How do you intend to do that?" another Committee member asked next. "How will you be sure that you're at the right place? We don't need any more retaliatory attacks."

Tony's eyes darkened. "Intel. Reconnaissance. We're quieter and faster than these bastards, we'll make sure they don't see us coming until it's too late. We won't storm in on maybe-leads and chances."

"We'll be unpredictable," Maggie added, and Tony looked over with a surprised quirk to his eyebrows. He met her determined eyes, and nodded.

"Exactly."

 

* * *

 

Tony had planned a small birthday celebration with the Avengers and their friends that night, but after the mission and the debrief no one was really in the mood to celebrate. But they came together and comforted themselves with each other's presence, eating and drinking and keeping the sense of failure at bay.

Maggie couldn't get the faces of the murdered doctors, nurses, and patients out of her head. She'd thought she was done with seeing the faces of people who were dead because of her, and the addition of seven more felt like a blade of ice in her stomach. She knew it wasn't the same, but… she knew they'd never be forgotten.

At the end of the night she gave Tony his present, wrapped in silver paper. When he tore it open to reveal a mug in the shape of Iron Man's helmet he groaned, and then went to show Pepper like an excited kid. When Maggie informed him that she'd also designed a range of new custom modifications for his nanotech armor he tried to run straight to the workshop, but Pepper reeled him back in and forced him to socialize for another hour or so.

Maggie went to bed heartsore and frustrated, but with a warm glow at the very center of her chest. It was disorienting, but she had the Kimoyo bead and Bucky on the other end to work through it.

 

* * *

 

June 2nd, 2017  
Mashhad, Iran

"Enjoying your birthday so far, Mags? Is this how you pictured yourself at thirty one?"

Maggie didn't look away from her holographic screen as her fingers danced through shreds of local electronic transmissions, searching for what she needed. She didn't need to look up anyway since the question had been asked by Tony, who wasn't in the disguised van with her. He was in his armor in stealth mode, hidden in an alley several blocks away.

"This isn't really how I pictured spending my birthday, no," she replied, trawling through hundreds of innocuous communications. The other agents in the van with her watched silently, some of them monitoring security cameras and liasing with local law enforcement. Maggie wore the dark blue tactical suit again, her hair tied up out of her face and her comms unit snug in her ear. "Though I wouldn't change it for the world."

Over the past four days the Avengers had been looking for ARES nonstop, in quiet desert town and bunkers throughout the area. Two days ago Maggie had been looking through the mission footage from Turkmenistan and caught Tessler's 'unpredictability' speech a second time. That got her thinking, and she suggested at a meeting with the other analysts that ARES might be hiding in plain sight. Following up on that hunch, an analyst back at the facility found signs of a paramilitary group taking up residence in a suburb of Iran's second most populous city, Masshad.

Maggie had caught a glimpse of the city on their way in on commercial planes – the Quinjet was too visible. Masshad was a sprawling city with stretching spires, turquoise domes and gilt towers gleaming in the sun. Her mission research told her that it was a place of religious pilgrimage and culture, home to poets, composers, and artists. But aside from that first glimpse, she'd been stuck in the back of a van with seven other agents for the past four hours, watching the ARES hideout. Avengers agents had already been surveilling the building for the past day and a half and confirmed that it was indeed ARES's base, so Maggie's team was there to run final checks.

The building itself was a series of interconnected buildings that looked residential on the outside, spanning a few blocks. The sun beat down on the quiet tree-lined streets, and a late morning breeze fluttered against the curtains in the concrete buildings' windows. After a few hours of surveillance Maggie's team had called the other Avengers in to the area.

Rhodey had asked: "Are we  _absolutely_ sure this is the place? We can't be wrong this time."

"We're sure," Maggie had replied. "The surveillance teams were right, this place is all wrong. There's no foot traffic, there's sentries at the end of every block, and there's no sign of kids in the neighborhood. This is a base."

So now the Avengers and their strike teams were surrounding the complex of buildings and quietly evacuating civilians. Maggie, with Vision and F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help, had been doing something else entirely for nearly three hours, uncertain that she'd even succeed.

She was beginning to lose hope, until:

"I found it!" she exclaimed, her kaleidoscope of holographic data suddenly coalescing around a single shred of a digital signal. "Well, F.R.I.D.A.Y. technically found it, but we found it!" She grinned breathlessly and glanced around at the other agents in the van, who… were all focused on other mission details.

Luckily she had the rest of the team on comms.

"You did?" came Tony's voice. "Where is it?"

Maggie scrutinized the blip of data she'd found and started to expand. So far every ARES base they'd come across had had an immensely destructive bomb hidden somewhere close by, specifically to punish the Avengers if they attacked. Maggie had been tasked with finding the bomb detonation signal receiver. She'd been painstakingly combing through Mashhad's gigabytes of electronic transmissions for hours, and though she had no doubt that she'd finally found the signal, ARES was good. She sighed.

"I can't tell. Vision, any luck?"

"I'm afraid not," he replied. "The signal itself is not enough to physically find the bomb. But we are able to block its receiving capabilities and prevent ARES from remotely detonating it."

"Great, do that!" said Rhodey.

"We can't do that," Maggie cut in. "Once the bomb's receiving capabilities are shut down that triggers a detonation countdown."

"How long?"

"The last bomb was set to five minutes."

Silence rang out over the comms. Maggie bit her lip, and looked over to the pair of agents at the front of the van, who were monitoring the feed from a mobile stealth camera they'd snuck into the ARES complex (Maggie had helped with the camera design: it was a little grey tube about the size of her pinkie finger that used hundreds of tiny filament-like legs to creep across any surface, and utilized retro-reflective panels that made it nearly invisible to the naked eye). So far all they'd seen were off-duty men and women strolling down the complex corridors or chatting in doorways. As she watched, the drone spied on a conversation between two men wearing the ARES sand-colored tactical suits.

"Hold off on blocking the receiver," Tony eventually said, his voice heavy. "But we can't wait around for them to show us where the bomb is, we don't know what they've got planned next."

"So what's the play?" Rhodey asked.

"We do this quietly – Rhodey, you help me on the perimeter, we'll capture all the ARES members we can and have the strike team question them for the location of the bomb. Vision, you search the area – you've got that scanning capability, and you can move faster than us. Maggie, stand by the receiver blocker. You might only have a second to deactivate it so stay sharp."

"Affirmative." The word slipped out of the part of her mind that was all Wyvern, a lizard brain that only knew missions and the ever present promise of death. She swallowed.

"The bomb containment unit's on standby," Tony continued. "I've done what I could in the past four days to reinforce the tech but it still probably won't contain the full force of the bomb, so let's keep that as a last resort." He sighed, but when he next spoke his words were grim: "Lets do this."

For the next ten minutes Maggie diverted her attention in three directions: first to Tony and Rhodey's video feeds as they slipped up behind sentries and off-duty ARES members and brought them to the elite Avengers interrogators in dark alleys. Second, to Vision's feed as he flew through the city, scanning buildings and phasing through walls. Third, to the feed from the tiny camera creeping its way through the ARES complex. She watched over the shoulders of the agents in the van, her brow furrowed.

The Avengers interrogators opened up the comms to inform them of another failed interrogation: "These sentries are low level, they don't know where the bomb is."

"Okay," came Tony's gritted voice. "Vision?"

"I am still searching."

"Maggie?"

"Nothing," she replied, then leaned over the van agents' shoulder to point out a door at the end of the corridor. "Try in there." She gripped the back of the driver's seat as she watched the holographic screen, tracking the stealth camera's journey across the stone wall. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Vision fly further above the city so he could scan a block of apartments.

The stealth camera slipped between the door and its hinge, and after a second of darkness Maggie's eyes focused on the room beyond: a wide room full of people in civilian clothes and ARES uniforms, ambling from tables covered in food to chairs and recliners around the edge of the room, or poring over files and documents at tables. The room itself was beautiful, with earthy Iranian tapestries draped across the walls and an intricate design of tiles on the high ceiling. Bronze and lapis lazuli ornaments lined the windows and adorned wooden tables. ARES was living richly, basking in the spoils of their raids.

"Okay, we've got something," Maggie said. "Some kind of meeting in the southwest corner, third floor. Looks like more senior agents, I recognize a few from the ARES files." The camera scuttled across the ceiling, and Maggie's eyes latched onto a man with a long face and white hair at the back of the room. He sat at a long desk, leaning back in his chair with his chin propped in his hand as a group of men and women in ARES uniforms spoke to him.

"Tessler spotted," she called.

Just as she did, the stealth camera picked up the audio as a radio on Tessler's desk squawked into life. " _The Avengers are here! Send backup, Iron Man is_ – _"_ it dissolved into static.

"God  _dammit_!" Tony cursed into the comms.

There was no pause, no second of processing. Tessler's eyes widened and he lunged for a thin grey box on his desk, flipping open the plastic casing before slamming a finger down on a detonation button.

Maggie was half a second faster.

Once Tessler hit the button he shot to his feet and cocked his head, listening, even as chaos broke out in the room full of ARES generals. But outside the room, nothing had changed in Mashhad.

Realization crossed Tessler's face, and Maggie  _saw_ rather than heard his growl. He went back to his little grey box and jabbed the button again, though Maggie could see in his eyes that he knew it wouldn't work. A smirk curled up her lips, but then realization of what she'd just done thudded in her chest.

"Avengers," she breathed into the comms. "The detonation countdown starts  _now_ , we've got to–"

Vision cut her off: "I have located the bomb!"

"What?" She turned to Vision's feed, which showed him soaring down to a multi-storey apartment building a few blocks away. He phased through the top three stories and came to an abrupt halt right in front of a large black case in an empty apartment. Maggie's heart skipped a beat, and a breath of relief whooshed up from her chest as Vision set about scanning the bomb and trying to get it open.

"Avengers agents en route to clear the building, and the bomb defusal unit is in the atmosphere above the apartment complex," Rhodey called. "Get started on defusal, Vision."

"I've got Tessler," came Tony's voice, and Maggie turned back to the stealth camera feed just in time to see the south wall of ARES's headquarters implode under the force of the Iron Man armor. He burst into the room, a red and gold wrecking ball, and the ARES agents either opened fire or fled.

"Iron Man is in the building," Maggie reported to the agents on the ground. "ARES are scattering, close in on the exits and take them down. We can't let them get away this time."

Once the initial hailstorm of bullets had all bounced off his armor, Tony cocked his head and the suit released dozens of heat-seeking sedative projectiles. Within two seconds the projectiles hit each remaining ARES member, injected sedative directly into their bloodstreams, and sent them crumpling to the ground. One man collapsed against a mahogany ornament table in a spectacular display of splintering wood and shattering vases. Maggie's eyes darted toward Vision's feed to see him prying off the top of the bomb. She checked her digital countdown: they were almost at four minutes. She swallowed thickly.

Back in the ARES base, Tessler remained standing. Iron Man's white glowing eye slits turned on the ARES leader and he took a step forward, his metal foot crunching in the rubble. Tessler didn't back away.

"It doesn't matter," the white haired man sneered, gesturing to his useless detonator. "You think you're so clever, but I  _warned you_ –"

"We know where the bomb is Tessler," Tony cut in, still pacing slowly toward the man. "Give it up. We beat you and we're taking you in."

Tessler held his ground, and through Tony's video feed Maggie saw an unholy gleam spark in the man's eyes. She wondered if the Avengers profilers were right, if his undiagnosed personality disorder had triggered a psychotic break with reality. She wondered if that would make their job easier or harder.

"Vision, how are you going?" she murmured into the comms.

"They have adapted and changed their construction technique as you predicted," the android replied, "though I believe I can defuse this device in the time left."

Maggie bit her lip and turned back to Tony's feed. Out of the corner of her eye, her timer read  _3:45_.

"You're a fool," Tessler spat, and finally reacted to Iron Man's approach; he sidestepped around his desk and backed away, matching Tony's steps. "After today ARES will make ten more bombs and detonate them across the region in the Avengers' name." His eyes narrowed. "Today we build the shrine to your failure."

Maggie heard the faint intake of air as Tony opened his mouth to deliver a snappy retort, but then, faster than she thought he could move, Tessler swiped something off his desk and hurled it at Iron Man. The suit automatically targeted and destroyed the thing – a small black disc – but not before it activated. A pulse of blue light exploded from the device, swept across the room and slammed into Tony's armor. His video feed went dark.

"Tony!" Maggie whirled back to the stealth camera feed, which had thankfully escaped the blue light. Iron Man was still exactly where he'd been standing before, only now lifeless – the eye slits no longer glowed, the arc reactor flickered, and his limbs seemed frozen.

"Tony!" she repeated, fighting back the rising panic. "Tony, report!"

Another agent in the van leaned over. "Looks like an EMP. I thought those didn't work on the armor?"

Maggie swallowed. "Most wouldn't," she said, and she forced herself to think rationally. "Tessler must have access to potent tech, but even that won't affect the suit for long. Iron Man will be back online soon."

"Maybe not soon enough," the agent replied grimly. Maggie followed his eyes back to the feed, and narrowed her eyes at the sight of Tessler now in the far corner of the room, pulling back an ornate rug to reveal a metal trap door. The man looked over his shoulder at the still-dormant Iron Man armor, sneered, then pulled a ring on the trap door to swing it open.

"I did warn you," Tessler called, his voice cold. Then he swung his legs into the gaping hole beneath the floor and dropped out of sight. The trapdoor closed with a clang.

"C'mon, c'mon…" Maggie hissed, her hands clenching and unclenching. "Rhodey, Tessler's just escaped the main room, can you–"

All at once, Tony's feed flickered to life again and the Iron Man armor lurched across the room toward the trap door.

"–sneaky pompous  _asshole_!" came his voice, hoarse in a way that suggested he'd been shouting inside his suit for the past ten seconds.

"Tony!" Maggie breathed, as he ripped open the trapdoor hatch. "I'm scanning the building, it looks like that chute leads to the sewer system - if you follow him you should catch up in no time."

"Got it," Tony replied grimly. "How's Vision doing on the–"

She didn't hear the rest of his sentence, because one moment a flash of orange light filled his video feed, and the next a familiar boom resounded outside the white van. The van swayed, and Maggie slapped a hand against the side to steady herself even as her heart seemed to stop in her chest.

"I thought we had three minutes!" cried the agent in the front seat, clutching his head where it had hit the driver's side window. Maggie leaned past him to look up at the ARES complex. A fireball consumed the entire southwest corner, and before her eyes the structure crumpled and fell in on itself, floors and floors of the building crunching down. The sound was horrific: the screech of rending rebar and the concussive cracks of concrete as the building caved in.

"That wasn't the main bomb," she breathed, even though the fire hurt her eyes and her ears were still ringing from the blast. She looked over her shoulder at Vision's feed, where he was still precisely and carefully dismantling the large bomb. She turned back to the corner structure of the ARES complex, which was already starting to look less like a fireball and more like a smoking pile of rubble. "That was Tessler's exit strategy." She pressed her fingers to her comm piece. " _Tony_! Tony, report!"

She was met with nothing but silence and the fuzzy grey of his disabled video feed, but Maggie kept the edges of panic at bay by reminding herself that in his suit a building ten times that size could explode on top of him and he'd walk out without a scratch.

"Tony!" Rhodey echoed over the comms, his voice threaded with panic. "C'mon, Tony, we don't have time for your dramatic pauses–"

"He'll be okay," Maggie cut in, as she checked on the agents inside the van – aside from the driver's minor head wound, they were all fine. "His suit'll hold up but even our comms struggle to get through tonnes of concrete. What's your status?"

"Still working on rounding up the rest of ARES," Rhodey replied grimly. "Though Tessler just dropped a building on half of them."

"Keep at it," Maggie replied. "They'll go after civilians to punish us, so make sure to keep them from getting past the evacuation line. Vision?"

"I have deactivated all the external traps and am now accessing the detonator," Vision replied. "I will need at least another two minutes to ensure I'm cutting the right wires."

Maggie checked the digital timer. "You've got three. Be careful." Her heart was pounding, partly from the knowledge that her brother was stuck under a building and partly from the much-larger bomb that Vision was currently elbow-deep in. But she knew that he could defuse it. And if not, they had the bomb containment unit on standby. Vision had already easily survived one blast and the Avengers agents had already set up a wide evacuation perimeter around the bomb.

But for some reason, Maggie couldn't stop nerves crawling across her skin like so many bugs. The feeling itched at her, sending her pacing back and forth across the tight space of the van like a caged tiger. She thought of the gleam in Tessler's eye, and the building he'd sent crashing down around Tony. She thought of him fleeing through the sewers – he was alone now and they'd get him, but why couldn't she shake off the feeling that she was about to come apart at the seams?  
She double checked the progress of the agents in the van – they were coordinating civilian evacuation, trying to get Tony's comms back online, and monitoring the overall situation. A few garbled crackles came over Tony's comms, sounding much like frustrated grunts, but other than that he was still offline and buried.

One agent at the back of the van was flying a drone over the city, spying out fleeing ARES agents. The sun-baked buildings and bustling streets seemed jarring against the smoke plume blooming from the ARES building. But despite the fire and pile of rubble, the situation was mostly in hand.

_The Avengers, Mr Stark, are predictable._

At the memory of Tessler's cold, scornful voice Maggie clenched her fists again and forced herself to take deep breaths.  _You're overthinking it, Maggie. Tessler's a two-bit traitor and he's played all his cards._ She kept her eyes on the drone feed, watching the Avengers sweep through Mashhad's streets.

But her skin still crawled. Tessler's voice echoed in her mind:  _Today we build the shrine to your failure._

The agent controlling the drone pulled it up a little, reporting into the comms that he was going to see if he could track Tessler in the sewers, but as the feed tilted up Maggie's eyes snagged on a smooth, round shape amongst the blocky apartments.

"Wait," she said, her hand coming to rest over the agent's and holding the drone where it was. The agent jumped and looked up at her, blinking.

Maggie didn't look away from the feed. The shape she'd spotted was a dusty, faded blue dome a few blocks in the other direction from the fighting.  _Just a temple._ But Maggie's mind was whirling, thoughts flowing and coalescing, and something thrumming in her veins wouldn't let her look away from this irrelevant bulb poking out of the suburban buildings. All the action was in the complete other direction, and yet…

She slipped the drone controls out of the agent's hands. He didn't protest, just watched her with a bemused look on his face. Mouth dry, Maggie piloted the drone away from the smoking ARES headquarters, away from the fighting, and toward the old, dusty temple. It was obviously an ancient structure: the painted blue dome had almost completely faded back to its original sandy color, and scaffolding covered its entire northern side. It sat in the middle of the busy suburban area, an odd afterthought from the past. It didn't look like anyone had worshipped there in many years.

"Ms Stark…" the drone-less agent said, a furrow in his brow.

_A shrine to your failure._

Her thumb inched forward on the controls, and the drone dipped down to the temple and in through a crack in one of the boarded-up windows.

She didn't know what she'd been hoping for. But the instant the drone's camera adjusted to the dimmer light and picked out the dark, sharp lines of a large black case in the middle of the temple's empty earthen floor, a sickening sense of dread seized her heart and squeezed, sending the drone controls tumbling out of her numb hands.

She heard the agent's horrified murmur of  _oh god_  but she couldn't process it because there was  _another bomb, another bomb_ –

"Another bomb!" she blurted into the comms, panic constricting her throat so the words came out high and thready. "There's another bomb, it's in the abandoned temple two blocks west, is anyone in the area?"

"Christ," Rhodey breathed. "It's active?"

"When we blocked that detonation command we blocked  _all_ receivers of  _all_ bombs in the area, it's just as active as the other one," she replied, her heart pounding against her ribs. "There's got to be hundreds of civilians around it. Vision?"

"I'm not finished disabling this one!" Vision replied, as panicked as she'd ever heard him. "I'm hurrying, but–"

Rhodey's voice cut in: "I might be able to go but I don't know how to disable it, and ARES is gunning for the civilians now." Maggie's eyes flickered to the blinking digital timer: less than three minutes. Another crackle came through Tony's comms, but then cut out again.

Maggie's heart thudded so strongly that it reverberated through her bones, and she opened her mouth to speak but Rhodey got in first:

"Deploy backup." His voice was steady. "You're up, Wyvern."

Maggie didn't even think to hesitate. She kicked the van's back doors open (startling the agents inside) and dived out, her nanotech wings sprouting through the back of her dark blue tactical suit like unfurling metal leaves. She leaped off the ground in a blast of dust and roaring engines.

The wind tore at her face as she arced out of the street and into the sky, all her pent-up energy flowing through her limbs and streamlining her through the air. As she flew, she pulled on a pair of F.R.I.D.A.Y.-equipped flight goggles and through the red lenses kept her eyes fixed on the faded cerulean dome in the distance.

"I'm on my way."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh, did I leave you with another cliffhanger?
> 
> Also, just wanted to let you know that I went temporarily insane and went back over every single tweet during Maggie's trial and embedded them so they look like for-real tweets. They're scattered from chapter 58-70 if you want to check them out! Also in chapter 58 and 71 there's some AMAZING fanart by the awesome Travelilah :)


	78. Chapter 78

 

Maggie was in the air for only seconds, her wings glinting in the afternoon sun and her ears pounding with her heartbeat, before she exploded through one of the domed temple's boarded up windows and landed on the dusty floor. She landed in a crouch and then sprang toward the bomb, pulling up her sleeves and reaching for the tool bag she'd strapped to her belt.

"Show me the scans and the timer, F.R.I.D.A.Y." Bright blue digits appeared in the corner of her HUD goggles:  _2:05._  A second later a detailed scan of the bomb appeared, overlaying the black case itself. This bomb looked the same as the others (a gunmetal grey cube about the size of a washing machine) but she knew better than to think its insides were a carbon copy.

Her ears ringing and her eyes focused, Maggie selected a thin blade and a pair of pliers from her tools and bent over the device.

She'd studied the last bomb extensively – she'd be able to defuse that one in less than thirty seconds, but she didn't know how they'd changed this one. So she forced herself to take her time, even though her heart felt like it was trying to punch its way through her ribs. Her palms sweated as she clipped through the external booby traps and started prying away the metal casing.  _1:30. 1:29._ Her ears rushed with a roaring sound that seemed to mimic the sound of the last bomb when it detonated.

Maggie murmured an order F.R.I.D.A.Y. to not deploy the bomb containment unit; this temple was too fragile, the bomb containment punching through the roof would bring down the whole building and detonate the bomb. In the back of her mind, she suspected that was why ARES had put this bomb here in the first place.

She was distantly aware of Vision dismantling his own bomb and Rhodey protecting civilians from ARES over the comms. Avengers agents had swarmed the area around the temple and were evacuating as many civilians as they could, but she knew that they'd started evacuation too late to get everyone. The temple was surrounded by packed apartment complexes: families, children, the elderly. A few snippets of Tony's crackly voice came through the comms with the sounds of shifting concrete, but he was still mostly out of contact.

Maggie didn't respond to any of it. Her eyes were trained on the interior of the bomb, running over wires and casing and joinery. She snipped her way through booby traps, pausing once or twice to wipe the back of her hand across her forehead before her sweat dripped onto the exposed wiring.

The bomb engineers had changed some things up this time around to trick her – failsafes where there used to be harmless plates, wires taking different routes through the complex heart of the device, red herrings in the form of useless wires and welded boxes. But Maggie had been building bombs since she was seven, so she knew how this worked.

"Bomb deactivated!" Vision called into the comms, and Maggie's HUD flickered to show the unraveled carcass of the apartment complex device, its detonator timer stopped at  _0:45._  "I'm on my way to you, Maggie," Vision said.

"Good, help them get the civilians out," she replied. "We need to clear the building on the north side, it's still full of people."

"Maggie–"

"Do it," she bit back. "I've got this."

At least she thought she did. She cut a series of wires and diverted a power relay on another booby trap, then pulled away a mass of wiring to find the detonator: a compact black box with a timer display.  _0:25._

Something in her gut  _burned._ Her eyes darted over the detonator, assisted by the holographic scan overlay, and she finally spotted the wire she had to disconnect. She reached for it, nearly bent double with her head, shoulders and arms inside the bomb, but then hesitated.

_0:21. 0:20._

"Maggie?" came Rhodey's voice, so tense she wondered how he managed to get even that single word out. Her eyes darted along the blue rubber-encased wire, her mind full of circuitry and relays, and with a rush of alarm that felt like a kick in the guts realized that if she cut this wire now it would set off a failsafe further down the line that would trigger the bomb.  _0:15._

Her eyes welled with frustrated, terrified tears, even as she searched desperately for a way to divert the failsafe.

"Maggie," Rhodey called, "if you can't defuse it, get out of there!"

_0:10. 0:09._

She reached for the failsafe; an innocuous looking metal toggle attached to a base plate. Her sweaty fingers slipped over it. Holding her breath, she gripped the toggle with her pliers and twisted it off. There could be more failsafes, more booby traps linked to the wire she needed to cut to disable the bomb, but… out of the corner of her eye she saw:  _0:05. 0:04._

Time seemed to warp and pull apart.

–  _0:03_ –

She reached for the original wire, her vision swimming and her mind certain that her heart had already stopped. She watched herself snip through the wire as her whole body screamed like it was on fire.

For a second she just stared sightlessly at the cut wire, at the neatly shorn copper filaments. And then her eyes flicked back to the timer.

–  _0:02_ –

She stared.

The number didn't change.

Maggie gasped and wrenched her hands out of the bomb, stumbling backwards until she tripped and fell flat on her back on the dusty temple floor. Her pliers went skittering across the ground.

Lying on the mudbrick floor of the abandoned temple, drenched in sweat as she stared up at the arcing, cobwebbed dome that had been there for hundreds of years, Maggie breathed out a shaky laugh. That single hysterical breath was followed by another, and another, until her laughter echoed in the dusty hollow space, ringing across the dome and filling her ears.

She realized that people were shouting over the comms, calling her name.

_Breathe, Maggie._

"I'm okay," she breathed as she sat up. Her voice sounded so distant. "I'm okay. I… I disabled it."

Whoops and cheers filled the comms, and Maggie pulled her goggles up so she could wipe away her tears.

Tony's crackly voice came a little more online, enough for him to say: "I'm going to buy you a  _castle,_ Maggie."

She took a breath and stood up on shaky legs. "I'll buy my own damn castle."

On the far side of the temple one of the boarded-up doorways burst inward, and Maggie tensed for a moment before remembering that Rhodey had instructed Avengers agents to move in the moment they got confirmation of the bomb being defused. Once they kicked their way through the door the team of five agents turned wide eyes on Maggie, nodded, and then went to secure the bomb. It looked strange: the sleek technology in the middle of the ancient space, with clipped wires and plating strewn around it from where Maggie had tossed them aside. Maggie numbly wondered what many things this temple had seen in its thousand-year existence.

For a long moment she just stared at the bomb. But then an agent walked in her field of vision and she blinked.

"Oh." She shook her head and tuned into the comms again: it was filled with status reports from the agents rounding up the ARES members, and the occasional grunt or curse from Tony as he tried to free himself from the mountain of rubble. Maggie pulled her goggles over her face again, and looked down at the metal bracelets she wore on both wrists. Before her eyes they shivered and shifted, forming into two wrist-mounted energy blasters.

She took a breath. "Okay. Iron Man, status?"

"Covered in rock and getting real sick of it," came his crackly voice. "I've managed to make some progress but I have no idea where I am."

"On my way." With one last nod to the agents inside the temple, Maggie fired up her engines and kicked off the ground, pulling her wings back into her body just in time to shoot through a narrow window and into the sky.

 

* * *

 

Miles Bianchi had gotten away. He and the rest of his ARES combat squad had been out of the complex when it came under attack, and after circling back to check on the situation they'd agreed that evacuation was in their best interest. They'd slipped through backstreets away from the fighting, and by some stroke of luck the Avengers agents in their way had run off toward an abandoned temple a few blocks away. They circled toward a local bus terminal, blending in thanks to their civilian clothing and hidden weapons.

They'd just stepped into a residential street to cross it when, in a blur of sound and light, something dropped out of the sky onto the road to block their way.

"Oh  _shit_ ," murmured one of the agents.

Miles had to agree. Where there'd just been empty road there now stood a winged woman. Gunmetal grey wings arced up from her back, glinting in the afternoon sunlight, and she stood tall in a dark tactical suit with glowing red goggles fixed on he and his team. Miles was no idiot. He knew who this was.

He grit his teeth. "Engage."

At his command, the eight-strong combat team sprang forward. Miles went for the semiautomatic strapped to his back, and as he made the movement he watched the Wyvern lift both arms and fire three bolts of red light at the first three members of the team: Bartolf, Kravets and and Clavel. The bolts connected and sent them crumpling backwards. Miles swung his gun up but the Wyvern wasn't where she used to be: he hadn't seen her move but somehow she'd rolled between Nacif and Ivanov, and the wings were gone. She shot to her feet and flipped sideways, her wings suddenly reappearing and knocking the two to the ground with the bite of unforgiving metal.

Miles fired, but again she wasn't where she used to be. She'd darted sideways and kicked the next agent, Portela, in the knee, though from the way he screamed and crumpled to the ground clutching his bleeding leg Miles knew it was no normal kick.

It was just Miles and his drinking buddy Materska left, and – no, Materska was down, the pop of his dislocated jaw ringing loud in the street. Miles swung his gun and –

The world spun on its axis and he hit the ground with a crunch, the afterimage of the Wyvern's glowing red eyes burning in his vision.

"Got eight ARES runaways ready for pickup in the street two blocks southeast of the temple," he heard a woman's voice say. Then a black boot appeared in his vision, soundless on the pavement. A second later there was red light, and then darkness.

 

* * *

 

Tony had been trapped under the rubble of the ARES complex for nearly ten minutes and he was, quite frankly, getting sick of it. The suit was still online but his comms were screwed up, and all he could see was the heavy press of black rubble crowding him in and pressing him down. It was a good thing he didn't mind enclosed spaces. Give him a pile of rubble over the empty expanse of space any day. Though right now he wanted out of the rubble, so he could go kick some ARES ass.

He was painstakingly cutting away rubble with his wrist-mounted laser, careful not to cut his own head off in the process, when suddenly a blockage above him slipped away and bright sunlight shone down on his helmet eye slits.

"Agh!" He winced and turned off his laser, waiting for his HUD to adjust to the sudden influx of light. When it had, he looked up at the open sky above him and –

"Hey. Thanks, Maggie."

She grinned down at him, bent with her hands on her knees as she peered into the hole she'd dug in the rubble. "Think you can manage the rest?"

"Uh…" he checked the pressure and weight readings in his HUD. "Sure. Stand back?"

She disappeared from view, and seconds later he burst out of the top of the rubble heap, his repulsors flaring as dust and debris slipped off the armor. He shook himself.

"Right, what'd I miss? I heard about the second bomb, which – well done, Mags, and I'm serious about that castle if you ever feel the inkling–" he turned, and when he spotted her standing on the nearest patch of un-blown-up land he cut himself off.

He'd already seen her in the tactical suit today, and during their other mission. But there was a difference in seeing his sister in a tactical suit and seeing his sister as…  _the Wyvern,_ his brain supplied. He'd seen the Wyvern, that terrifying morning when Maggie's words had been read, but now he saw what the Wyvern could be, what she'd become.  _I am Maggie Stark. And I'm also the Wyvern._

She stood tall, her wings folded up against her back as if they were a part of her, as if she'd been born with them. Maggie seemed at home in herself in a way he hadn't really seen before – surety and confidence were in every line of her body, in the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her chin, to the way she'd planted her boots in the ground as if to say  _I am here._

Maggie didn't seem to notice his abrupt stop. She just met his helmet's eye slits with her own red goggles and briefed him on the situation: "Rhodey, Vision, and the agents are working on rounding up the rest of ARES – they've got escape routes and tunnels all over the city, and they're pretty heavily armed so they're making it difficult."

Tony shook himself again. "Tessler?"

She cocked her head. "We know the sewer system that he's in, but they're still having trouble finding him." She watched his reaction, and he felt rather than saw her attention drop to his clenched fists. The corner of her mouth tugged up. "Go get him."

"Don't tell me what to do," he retorted, but he was already pulling up the sewer system on his HUD. "And you?"

Her head turned west, to the direction of the fighting. Even from here they could hear gunshots and shouts. "I'm going to do my job."

"Be careful. Catch you on the other side, Wyvern."

"Later, Iron Man." Her wings rose on either side of her, and with a tip of her chin to him Maggie sprang into the air. He watched her soar over the buildings toward the fighting, a metal and flesh Avenger, and swallowed down the sudden rush of pride that hit him in the chest.

Suddenly he remembered Tessler, with his stupid smug face and his 'unpredictability'.  _Let's get that bastard._

He fired up his repulsors and rocketed into the sky.

 

* * *

 

Maggie threw herself into the fray, and was surprised at how much it felt like lifting a weight off her chest. It wasn't the violence that gave her the feeling, but the knowledge that she was using her skills, skills that very few people had, for good. She helped Rhodey create a new perimeter and work inwards, ferreting out the ARES members and shutting down their resistance.

It was the first time since the airport battle in Leipzig that she'd fought with her wings. It felt like returning home, slicing through the air and outmaneuvering her opponents, the wind in her ears and her eyes focused. Most of the fighting was in evacuated residential complexes and streets. Rhodey struggled to fight in the cramped spaces in his armor, but Maggie was used to streamlining herself – she went from crashing through walls to slipping through narrow cracks, her wings flaring and retracting within the space of a thought. Her practice with the energy blasters paid off, making her a whirlwind of glinting metal wings and flares of red light. She, Vision, and Rhodey worked well together, covering blind spots and calling out warnings and opportunities.

As the noose grew ever tighter around ARES, a few members got desperate and hijacked a civilian van. They drove right through the police roadblock and onto a main thoroughfare, swerving all over the place. They outstripped the Avengers agents, but Maggie wasn't bound to the earth. She rocketed over rooftops towards the road, forming her nanotech into boosters for additional speed, then dove down to the van and plunged her heel spurs through the hood to anchor herself. She heard the men inside shout in alarm, and the van swerved to the far left of the road.

She glared at them through the windshield. "Pull over!"

They didn't. They started swerving wildly, trying to shake her off, but with her heel spurs wedged in the body of the van she wasn't going anywhere. The passenger pulled a gun.

"Right then." She leaned forward and punched through the windshield, her gloves protecting her from the shattered glass. The men screamed again, then abruptly stopped when her energy blaster bolts hit them.

Driverless, the van careened to the right. Maggie flared her wings and fired up her engines, pushing the power of her wings against the van's momentum. For ten heart-stopping seconds she strained, wings beating and muscles protesting her awkward position, as she looked over her shoulder and watched a building on the side of the road grow closer and closer. The rubber tires squealed on the road and screams filtered into Maggie's hearing and then–

With a shriek and a judder, the van came to a stop. For a moment Maggie didn't move beyond dropping her head and closing her eyes. She let out a breath. Then, careful of the broken glass, she pulled her heel spurs out of the van's smoking hood and jumped down to the road. Civilians on the side of the street stared from the van to her, taking in her raised metal wings and her strange get up. The sun beat down on the top of her head.

"Rhodey?" she breathed. "Please tell me that was the last of them. Catching bad guys is a lot harder than being a bad guy."

When he replied, he sounded like he was smiling. "The agents got the last group holed up in the theatre, and Tony just showed up with Tessler, who looks like he might wish he'd dropped the building on himself. We got 'em."

Maggie closed her eyes again and turned her face to the sun.

Tony's voice came over the comms: "Good job, Avengers. Let's clean up and move out. Hey, Maggie?"

"Yeah?"

"Happy birthday."

She grinned.

 

* * *

 

From: Maggie  
 _You know all those times we used bombs in HYDRA? They were tools, weapons, just the same as us. I thought about that today. I thought about the people in the buildings around the bomb, and I wondered if they would feel anything before they died.  
I didn't think about that bomb today as a tool, it was… it was like a black hole, sucking in everything around it. I couldn't look away. I've been afraid plenty of times in my life, but today was one of the worst, and I hated feeling that way again.  
But then I _stopped it.  _And that made me feel like I could lift the world on my shoulders and dance. What does that make me, that being so close to death made me feel so incredible?_

From: Bucky  
 _Doesn't sound like you were excited about being close to death, Meg. It sounds like you were excited about being alive, and about the people around you being alive. That makes you a hero._

_And doll: happy birthday. I kinda wish you hadn't spent it almost getting yourself killed, but I'm glad you got to take out those assholes and come home safe. I wish I could be there. I love you._

 

* * *

 

Back at the facility that night Maggie yawned her way through a debrief on a call with the Accords Committee. They didn't say much about her involvement beyond acknowledging that she'd joined the action. They didn't even acknowledge that it was her who'd discovered and defused the second bomb. But Maggie couldn't care less about their approval, so she just listened and gave her report when someone asked her for it. She did perk up at news of Tessler's court martial and upcoming prison sentence, however.

After the official debriefing the Avengers had a drink in the common room and ate Maggie's birthday cake, their faces lined with tiredness and their voices full of satisfaction. Pepper sat beside Tony and absently ran her fingers through his hair as he crafted colorful and ever-cruder insults about Tessler. After twenty minutes, Maggie fell asleep on Vision's shoulder.

The Avengers agreed to lay a blanket over her and let her sleep on the couch. Tony unearthed a sharpie and tried to draw on her face, but the second Maggie sensed something come near her face she snapped awake and seized it, almost breaking Tony's hand. He apologized and backed off, and Maggie went back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

June 3rd, 2017

She woke up the next morning under a soft blanket, with a glass of water on the table beside her. She rolled onto her side and checked her Kimoyo bead, and smiled when she read the latest message from Bucky, following up about her mission and telling her about how he'd had to rescue one of his goats when it got its head stuck in a fence.

Ten minutes later, once she had just about summoned the energy to roll off the couch and head to her room, Pepper walked in. She wore a crisp charcoal grey pantsuit, and there was a crease in her brow.

"So, you're in the news again," she called by way of hello.

Maggie gave a jaw-cracking yawn. "Why?"

"Since the Avengers have to be publicly accountable, part of the deal is that they publish the names or aliases of all their on-duty combatants."

Maggie sat up. "Wait, what?"

"They did explain this at the debriefing yesterday–"

"I didn't hear–"

"The way Vision tells it, they mentioned it in amongst a whole list of other bureaucratic jargon; they were probably counting on you not paying attention. I doubt they wanted your input, what with your… um, track record with the press." Pepper raised an eyebrow at Maggie's huff, then waved her hand and brought up a wide holographic screen. "Anyway, I think the Accords Committee thought they could sneak your name through without anyone noticing. Or maybe they just don't care.  _Anyway_ –" With another twist of her fingers, Pepper brought up a national news program.

A pair of news anchors appeared on screen, with a headline scrolling beneath them:  _Shock Accords Briefing: The Wyvern joins the Avengers._

Maggie rubbed her hands over her face.

The first news anchor shuffled their notes. "In the early hours of the morning today the Avengers press department put out an Accords-sanctioned briefing about yesterday's events in Iran. This is standard procedure for Avengers missions, though honestly with a mission on the scale of that we saw yesterday I know most of us were expecting at least a press conference, and not the two-page written briefing circulated earlier."

"That's right, Katherine," added the other anchor, "and we were  _especially_ surprised when we came across the following detail:" – a copy of the briefing appeared on screen, with a short sentence on the second page highlighted – "this is a list of the on-duty combatants, which includes the Avengers we know as well as many agents. However, one sharp-eyed soul noticed a  _new_ name on the list. Here you can see it says:  _the Wyvern (called in from a support position)_."

"And so it seems we're in the midst of another media frenzy about Ms Margaret Stark, AKA the Wyvern. Not four months after being vindicated of no less than thirty first degree murders, she's built up a name for herself in philanthropy, advocacy, and scientific circles, and now she's a bona-fide Avenger. Jim is this the story of an underdog rising, or a sinister takeover from within?"

Pepper cut off the clip there and turned around.

Maggie swallowed. "So, people noticed."

Pepper raised an eyebrow. "They sure did. I'll give you the run down: it's international news already, of course, and reactions are mixed. Some people are excited that you're helping out, but there's a decent portion of people who are angry that the Avengers have hired a…"

She was clearly floundering for a word, so Maggie filled in the blank: "Criminal and murderer."

"That's their perception," Pepper said with a frown, and brought up a holographic layout of clippings, headlines, and opinion polls. Maggie blinked up at the data, overwhelmed as always by just how  _big_ the world was and how much of it knew about her.

"But," Pepper continued, wading through the kaleidoscope of media reactions, "I'd say that the negative reaction is outweighed by the positive. Here:" she brought up a series of clips from talk show hosts, news anchors, and politicians.

"– _I've always said that Maggie Stark deserves a second chance, and_ – _"_

 _"She was found_ not guilty,  _and I think we're all well aware of just how effective she would be as an Avenger_ – _"_

 _"_ – _she knows crime in a way that not many others do, and that's a valuable outlook_ – _"_

 _"Honestly, she's the perfect face for the Accords._ " Maggie blinked at that. The speaker was a news anchor. " _She's an enhanced person with a troubled past whose efforts are being aimed in the right direction thanks to the UN and the Accords. Isn't that what we wanted?_ "

Maggie put her elbows on her knees and rubbed her eyes.

Pepper shut down the auto-playing clips. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm just… I should've expected this. But I didn't."

"And you don't like that people are already putting words in your mouth before you've even had a chance to say your piece," Pepper intuited.

Maggie looked up and smiled wryly. "You know me too well."

"It's true," she replied. "And now… I'd go and get ready for the day, Maggie. I have a feeling that we haven't heard the last of this yet."

 

As always, Pepper was right. No less than ten minutes after Maggie had finished showering and changing, F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerted her that Secretary Ross had arrived at the facility and wanted to talk to the Avengers.

It was the first time Maggie and Ross had physically been in the same room since the trial, and the tension in the air was so thick it felt slightly suffocating. Still, they managed to suffer through the meeting, in which Ross explained that due to the 'unanticipated media frenzy' they needed to hold a press conference. With Ross and all the Avengers. Including Maggie. That afternoon.

Rhodey and Vision didn't particularly like press conferences to begin with and they were worried that Ross would somehow throw Maggie to the wolves, but Maggie understood that this needed to happen so she talked them into it. Tony was similarly worried about Maggie, but he took to handling the media like a duck to water so he wasn't so worried. Maggie… she felt an anxious thrum just under her skin that reminded her of the early hours of the morning before her first surprise press conference – her gut churned and her palms sweated, thinking of standing up before the world and opening herself up to their judgement. But the last time she'd done it to confess to a whole bunch of murders. At least this time she was there to talk about how she planned to  _save_ people.

 

So that was how, in the middle of the afternoon, Maggie found herself standing in the open, airy space of the Avengers Facility foyer, getting briefed with the rest of the Avengers before they stepped into the press briefing room. Tony was in one of his stupidly expensive suits and his orange F.R.I.D.A.Y. sunglasses. Vision looked particularly professorial in a nice grey suit and tie, and Rhodey had opted for his Air Force uniform. Maggie felt a bit like a kid playing dressup standing beside them, though she'd tried her best with her nicest suit (Pepper had helped her buy it) and sharp red blouse. Tony had the gall to lean over and whisper " _you look like a corporate nerd_ ", so she elbowed him in the side.

Ross finished briefing them, still looking supremely unhappy to be breathing the same air as Maggie, and minutes later they got the go ahead to enter the briefing room. The door swung open, releasing the sound of dozens of chattering journalists and snapping cameras. Ross strode straight in, looking dignified as ever in his deep blue suit covered in medals.

Maggie, Tony, Vision, and Rhodey, who had formed a kind of circle, shared a glance.

"Ready?" Tony asked. He got a series of grim nods, and then clapped his hands together. "Alright Avengers, let's do this."

Once Ross had taken his place at the podium, Tony swaggered into the room followed by the rest of the Avengers. Maggie walked in last, after Vision, and she felt the attention in the room shift to her like a laser focus.

There was a podium set up at the front for all of them to sit behind, like a panel. Someone had even set out a jug of water and some glasses. Maggie took her seat beside Vision, then looked up at the waiting crowd. The sea of faces and camera lenses felt eerily familiar to her first press conference, and she took three deep breaths.

Her skin prickled, but at the same time this was nothing like that first time. She cocked her head, considering the feeling, and then found herself looking to her right _._ Vision, looking pensive as he considered the waiting crowd, Rhodey carefully displaying his stone-wall expression that Justin Hammer had apparently once said made him look like a 'sphinx', and Tony, waving to the reporters he recognized and grinning for the cameras. She purposefully did not look at Ross's stupid face.

Maggie realized that this time felt different because it was. She sat here with her team, as equals. She felt safe.

Her fingers itched for the Kimoyo bead tucked under her shirt, but she kept her hands in her lap. She could talk to Bucky about this later. For now, she had a press conference to do.

Ross settled the crowd down and cleared his throat to deliver his new pre-prepared briefing. Maggie didn't really listen. It didn't say much of anything that the other briefing hadn't, besides mentioning that Maggie had signed the Accords, that she'd been there in a back-up position, and that 'the severity of the situation required her participation'. He did also mention that she had used metal wings during the mission, which caused an increase in the volume of clicking cameras. Maggie sensed Tony fidgeting throughout the briefing, and sighed a breath of relief when Ross managed to get through the whole statement without Tony interrupting.

Then: "We will now take questions," said Ross, with the disgruntled air of a parent allowing a child to do something they didn't approve of.

Every hand in the room shot up. They didn't yell, though – apparently word of Ross's strict press conference technique had got around. Barely concealing a resigned sigh, Ross gestured to a man in the front row.

The man stood and asked: "Secretary Ross, how can you justify putting a former assassin for HYDRA on the Avengers roster?"

Maggie looked out of the corner of her eye at Ross. He looked deeply unhappy with the question, but they'd all been prepared with talking points before the conference so he launched into those. "Margaret Stark's trial found her not culpable for those crimes. The Accords Committee doesn't approve combatants with no vetting process, and we have evaluated Ms Stark's mental and physical fitness. This is all above board, and the Wyvern can be a great asset for the Avengers."

Maggie was kind of surprised by that last comment, but she supposed Ross had to show more support than just saying ' _this is probably legal_ '.

Ross cleared his throat and leaned forward. "And if you'll cast your minds back, the original Avengers had a couple of ex-assassins on the team as well."

Maggie's thoughts flickered to Romanoff, whom she'd never actually had a proper conversation with but who had always seemed to understand something in Maggie that not many people did. Then she thought of Barton, who she'd met briefly at an airport and had fought alongside. The crowd of journalists murmured.

Ross gestured for a new questioner, and a woman in the third row got picked. "My question is for Ms Stark," she said, and Maggie sat up straighter. "You've signed the Accords, does this mean that you support them despite fighting against them only last year?"

Maggie took a deep breath, even as she sensed Ross bristle at the other end of the table. She'd been given a long list of talking points to prepare for this press conference, and she had a strict script to keep to for that particular question: some bullshit about how she'd seen the error of her ways, and that the Accords were the best option for the Avengers and the world.

And yet, when Maggie looked up and met the female journalist's eye, she remembered just how much she disliked being told what to do. She squared her shoulders, and leaned forward so the microphone would pick her up clearly. "I want to help people," she said simply. "This allows me to do that."

A ripple of conversation made its way across the room, accompanied by side-eyes and pointed looks. Ross just smiled thinly, but she felt his animosity spread and crackle in her direction. She knew she'd be yelled at later about this, but they should have figured out by now that she wasn't going to tell any lies.

Ross faced a few more questions – about the decision to hire Maggie, about her trustworthiness, about the new team dynamic. Then a reporter from WHiH addressed a question to Tony:

"How do you feel about working with your sister?"

Tony leaned forward. "Honestly?" He paused, looking thoughtful, and everyone in the room strained for his next words. "I think it's going to be a nightmare," he finished. "She's annoyed the hell out of me since I was sixteen."

That got a chuckle, and Maggie rolled her eyes. The next few questions were directed at Vision and Rhodey, essentially asking the same thing. They were much more complimentary in their replies and Rhodey, being the secret shit stirrer that he was, casually let it slip that Maggie had identified and defused a massive bomb that would have taken out a large civilian center in Mashhad. That caused a bit more of an uproar – that Ross handled – and then the next reporter stood up.

"Maggie, did you set out to become an Avenger?"

"Nope," she replied. "If you'd have asked me a few months ago I'd have told you that I needed a break. But…" she looked at her team. "This is the right thing to do."

"Are you concerned about working with your brother?"

Maggie smiled. "I'll always worry about him as long as he's in the line of fire, but this way I can keep an eye on him." Tony rolled his eyes at her. "And," she added, "I think we make a pretty good team." She and Tony shared a glance, and simultaneously grinned. When she turned back, she was surprised to see a few journalists smiling at the exchange. "I'm excited to work with all of them, to be honest," she continued, casting a glance at Vision and Rhodey. "They've shown time and time again that they'll step up to do the right thing when the right thing must be done." Vision's eyes softened. "That's a team I want to be a part of."

"What's it like to be back in the air?"

Her eyes widened and she turned, finding the journalist who'd asked the question: a younger man from a local New York paper, clutching his notepad. He looked genuinely interested in her answer.

Maggie grinned at him and the cameras started clicking again. "It's  _awesome_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just two more chapters to go before the hiatus! Next chapter: Maggie gets a uniform.


	79. Chapter 79

 

From: Peter  
 _Hey Ms Stark, I saw you on the news! It's so awesome that you're an Avenger now, is it true that you get Starbucks discounts?_

From: Maggie  
 _Honestly I hadn't heard about that, but now I'm going to go find out. Thanks, Peter._

 

From: Shirley  
 _Go, Maggie! You be careful out there, being an Avenger doesn't mean you can't be cautious. By the way, since your birthday bash got canceled you'll have to come over and pick up the cake I made you. Let me know what time to expect you!_

 

* * *

 

Marrakech, Morroco

"So. Maggie Stark's an Avenger now."

Steve looked up from the blueprints on the table in front of him, his dark uniform seeming to absorb the shadows in the small room. "I know, I saw the news."

Sam crossed his arms over his chest. "And?"

Steve looked up again, and there was a glint to his normally serious eyes. "And… I think it's great."

"That's it? A new member on the… on the team, and all you can say is  _sure, it's great_?"

Steve sat back in his chair and ran a hand over his beard. His eyes were still glinting. "What do you want me to say, Sam? I think she'll be great, and if things were the way they used to be then I'd have asked her to join the team anyway."

"You would?"

"You wouldn't?" Steve cocked an eyebrow, and gestured to the TV screen in the corner, which – sure enough – was rolling the footage of the Avengers press conference. Maggie Stark leaned forward with a grin on her face to answer a reporter. She looked so different from the first time Sam had properly seen her face in that van in Germany. "You've seen her fight, you don't think she'd make a good Avenger?"

"Oh I know she can kick ass." Sam held up both hands. "I just thought you might have something to say about her… y'know, throwing herself headfirst into danger. You might recall that we spent months trying to keep her  _out_ of danger."

"Seems like she can handle herself," Steve replied wryly. The TV showed grainy footage of the Wyvern fighting with the Helicarriers in D.C. "And we can still keep an eye out for her."

"She signed the Accords."

The glint in Steve's eye did dim a little at that, and he leaned forward. "Yeah, I know," he sighed. "Seems like she's got the same idea that Nat did – keep one hand on the wheel and you can still steer."

"And look how well that turned out for Nat."

Steve sighed again. "Sam… the Avengers are the best defense the world has right now, and they're far better off for having Maggie on their side. As for the Accords… if the Committee comes after Maggie, then we'll be there when she needs us."

"Or Bucky'll have your hide."

"I think he's accepted that there's not much I can do to stop Maggie Stark when she sets her mind to something."

"He's learned from experience, I suppose." Sam sniffed and crossed his arms again as he eyed the TV. After a few moments, he added: "They better not start calling  _her_ 'the winged Avenger'."

Steve snorted. "Oh  _that's_ what this is about - you're worried she's usurping your position?"

"Uh, no, I just think it's important that people remember that I was the first Avenger with wings, and–"

"Sure, Sam. Let's get back to planning our surveillance."

 

* * *

 

From: Bucky  
 _I gotta say, I don't like that guy Ross, but it was pretty great to see him having to shut up and listen while people asked you questions. Looked like he wanted to eat his own mustache.  
_ _You've got a good team, looks like they've sure got your back. And I'm sure you won't listen to me but please at least try to be careful. In the field, and with the Accords Committee. And if you can't then remember Steve's out there and he's got your back too if you need it._

From: Maggie  
 _I will listen to you! Honestly, you make it sound like I'm deaf. And yeah, I rewatched the conference just for Ross's face. It was pretty great.  
_ _I meant what I said about the Avengers: they're a good team, and I'm excited to be a part of it. But I'm not under the illusion that there are only three Avengers left in the world. They're out there, and I have no doubt they'll be there when the world needs them.  
_ _Love you x_

_PS: I forgot to pass it along earlier, but Shirley said to make sure you eat enough, and to keep up your physio. I think she's worried you're going to walk lopsided for the rest of your life._

 

* * *

 

A few days later, Tony walked into the workshop to find Maggie perched on a stool, her chin resting on her fist as she considered a neatly folded dark blue tactical suit on the workbench in front of her.

"Having a stare down with your outfit, I see," he commented as he walked past, fending off U's attempts at getting in his way.

Maggie looked up. "It's standard issue," she said.

"The suit? Yeah, all the agents wear those. You worried it's not up to scratch?" He stopped walking and turned, his head suddenly full of combat specifications and damage resistance.

Maggie chewed her lip. "No, it's not that. The suits are fine, but…" she looked back at the lightweight suit, and cocked her head. "Honestly, the blue doesn't do it for me."

He blinked. "This is… a fashion issue?"

The corner of her mouth tugged up. "Kind of, I guess. But it's not so much fashion as it is…" her eyes gleamed. "I want to make a statement."

Tony knew the look Maggie got in her eyes when she had an idea, so he easily recognized it now. "Sounds like a fashion issue to me," he replied, and she rolled her eyes at him.

"Stop being such an asshole. You designed suits for the rest of the team, right?" She whirled her fingers and brought up a holographic design, just a basic outline. "Would you mind taking a look at my idea?"

Tony looked over her initial sketches and designs, her list of specifications, and her idea to make the entire uniform out of nanotech and house it in her wing moorings and those bracelets she wore all the time. "Huh," he said, and found himself nodding. His fingers itched to create, to fabricate, and he expanded her designs. "Alright, Maggot. Alright. Let's do this."

 

* * *

 

June, 2017  
Bariloche, Argentina

"Alright, the lakefront is secure and we've got the hospital under control," said Rhodey as he landed beside Tony and Vision outside the cathedral, where the Avengers were coordinating their operation against the terrorists who had attacked the mountain city three days ago. It was a cold, bright day, and the local residents who'd fled to the mountains were already filtering back into the city.

"That leaves only the two leaders," Vision summed up, turning away from a conversation with a senior Avengers agent. "Maggie?" he called into the comms. "Have you located them?"

"Oh, I located the hell out of them," came Maggie's voice. Seconds later a shadow flitted over their heads and they turned to see two bound men in camouflage gear fall right in front of an Avengers armored van. The Avengers agents on the ground looked up, smirked at the sight of the Wyvern wheeling overhead, and then went to process the captured terrorist leaders.

After one more loop over the city square, Maggie dropped out of the sky and landed on the pavement with sure feet and flared wings.

"Nice suit, Wyvern!" called a nearby agent, and she grinned at them.

Her new combat suit was more dark red than black, reminiscent of her HYDRA uniform and yet so much more  _her._ The dark red nanotech blend highlighted the strength of her body, lined with pockets and holsters for nearly anything she might need. She had her red goggles, of course, but she'd dispensed with the full-head cowl. Her face was bare, and her hair tied down. The suit did have an extendable cowl if she ever ended up in a fire or poisonous gas situation, or needed to hit extreme g-forces, but she preferred not to hide her face. She wore clawed gauntlets nearly identical to her ones from HYDRA (though these were nanotech) and her strong, lightweight black boots had slots for her heel spurs. Her energy blasters seemed small and innocuous on her wrists but packed a hell of a punch, as she was sure the terrorists would agree. She stored extra nanotech in the wrist circlets, ready to form new weapons as she needed them.

The suit was still fully capable of scaring the crap out of bad guys, especially when she flared her dark, sharp metal wings, but it didn't make her a monster. She was just… the Wyvern. An Avenger.

Vision and Rhodey nodded to her and went back to coordinating the start of the cleanup, but Tony cast a critical eye over her.

After a few long moments, Maggie sighed. "What."

The armor whirred as he shrugged. "I still think you should have put some gold in the suit."

"I'd rather eat it," she replied, then turned to Vision. "Okay, where do you need me?"

 

* * *

 

Working with the Avengers took some getting used to. Maggie was used to working in silence, sharing only the most essential mission details as she moved quick and quiet before a lethally efficient execution. The Wyvern and the Winter Soldier had never needed words.

But the Avengers' approach to missions was a little more…  _creative,_ was how she described it to Bucky. They discussed ideas and gave each other feedback, ribbing each other even in the very midst of battle (well, Tony and Rhodey did. Vision was a little more professional). And even as they teased each other, each member of the Avengers held each other up – they offered words of encouragement and support in the fight, patted shoulders and gave reassuring nods. They stuck up for each other, in the battlefield and in front of the Accords Committee.

Maggie wasn't used to it. But she loved it.

Tony worried about her, though he tried not to show it. He knew she could handle herself, but sometimes after fights he noticed that she was a little colder, a little more intense, until she shook it off and became his dorky little sister again. But he supposed violence didn't come so easily to her any more.

Maggie loved her wings, and her new suit. Wearing the suit made her feel finally like she was a part of the team – she felt strong, professional. She felt like she could handle anything. The suit didn't hide her like her HYDRA uniform had, it just felt like  _her._ Like the Wyvern had gone through some immense metamorphosis over the last three years to become this: an Avenger.

Bucky was endlessly supportive, talking her through her low moments and celebrating her highs, and though they'd made the odd long-distance relationship work for them Maggie found that she missed Bucky a little more every single day.

Vision took breaks more and more often as the weeks and months dragged on, giving vague excuses to the team but confiding in Maggie about his and Wanda's plans. Maggie filled in for him most of the time, glad that at least someone got to go see the person they loved. The Accords Committee weren't suspicious of Vision in the way they were of her, so he escaped their scrutiny much more easily. Maggie wasn't jealous, just annoyed at the Committee.

_One day_ – those became the words she and Bucky traded back and forth, a hope and a promise.

On one mission, in the sticky summer heat of June, Maggie found herself flying into another mission with the Avengers. She looked to Vision, soaring ahead of them with his gold cape streaming behind him, then looked from side to side at the metal men flying at her flanks. Tony's nanotech gleamed in the sunlight, and Rhodey looked like a flying tank with his shoulder-mounted cannons and heavy artillery. And then she paused to consider herself, wings spread wide and her heel spurs extended to give herself the extra edge of maneuverability in the air.

This was by no means her first mission as an Avenger, but in that moment it finally hit her just how much her life had changed. Here she was, soaring through the sky with her team, protecting people. It was what she'd always wanted.

When it came time to fight the Avengers worked together better than they ever had – they fell into a groove, seamlessly working with and around each other. Tony took point and they supported his leadership with their own advice. They swooped in, cleanly and efficiently dismantled their opposition, protected the civilians, and attempted to do as little damage to infrastructure as possible.

Later, in the cleanup, a little girl shyly asked Maggie for a high-five. Maggie complied, staring as the child's small white hand pressed against her dark clawed gauntlet. When the child rushed back to her mother excitedly exclaiming, Maggie grappled with the realization that she had become something that children didn't have to fear.

 

* * *

 

July, 2017  
Maggia Base, Colorado

"Wyvern, status?"

Maggie slipped out of the musty warehouse full of shipping containers and into a narrow corridor, her boots soundless on the concrete. "Still clearing the northeast sector," she murmured into her comms. "We've still got thirty missing persons unaccounted for."

"They will be here somewhere," Vision replied. "They're more valuable to the Maggia alive."

"Bastards," Rhodey added. "Human traffickers make me sick. Good call following up that lead from your advocacy group, Maggie."

Maggie didn't reply, too focused on checking each corridor intersection before she entered it. Her teammates already knew well by now how much she despised human trafficking – it hit a little too close to home for her, every time she heard of a child kidnapped from their home and taken away to have despicable things done to them.

Her HUD blinked. "I've got something," she murmured, sliding along the edge of the corridor so the fluorescent lights didn't cast her shadow and give her away. "Looks like a… basement of some kind. I'm going in to check it out."

"Be careful," Tony replied. "This chapter of Maggia have some pretty concerning connections with the scientific community, and we don't know how that'll manifest."

"Understood." She slipped down a set of metal stairs – careful not to make a sound – and found herself in a long, dark corridor with a metal door at the end. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., can you scan past that?"

After two seconds F.R.I.D.A.Y. brought up a illuminated scan of what lay behind the door on her HUD. Maggie took one look at the human forms in fetal positions behind metal bars and darted forward. The door gave way under two shots from her energy blasters and a well-placed kick, and she paused for half a second to let her eyes adjust.

The sight turned her stomach. The basement was a wide, low-ceilinged room full of cages. The cages were box-shaped, only large enough for a person to curl up in or sit, not to stand or lie down. The people inside the cages wore thin, dark clothes, with no sign of life beyond the slight rise and fall of their chests. The whole room rang with silence.

"Ms Stark–" F.R.I.D.A.Y. began, but Maggie cut her off.

"I've found them," she informed the rest of the team as she rushed to the nearest cage and knelt beside it, her hand snaking in to touch the captive's shoulder and turn them over. It was a girl, probably no older than twenty, her eyelids fluttering in her sleep. Her skin looked waxy and pale, as if she hadn't been in the sunlight for a long time. Maggie's gut twisted and she took a deep breath. "Keep the Maggia busy on the other end of the compound and send agents my way, I'm going to try to get them out."

She stood up, her head spinning, and looked around.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke again: "Ms Stark, there is–"

"Not now," Maggie grit out, and found herself moving towards another cage. The body inside was small, with one tiny hand curled around a metal bar. She dropped to her knees and reached through the bars to check the child's pulse. It was there: fluttery and light, but there. The little girl's eyelashes seemed so dark against her pale skin.

Maggie looked up. "Why aren't there any guards?"

F.R.I.D.A.Y. said something in reply but Maggie either didn't hear, or didn't understand. She put her hands on the bars of the child's cage and stared at them. Her vision swam. She needed to… she needed to break these.

She pulled, but the bars didn't move. Instead, her fingers slipped free and the world tilted, sending her crashing on her back. She blinked up at the concrete ceiling, which seemed to undulate and ripple before her eyes. Her ears rushed and roared with her own heartbeat.

"What–"

She closed her eyes.

 

Her eyes opened to a world ablaze with color and sound. She stood in the middle of a wide, gleaming dance hall, the light soft and decadent in a way that reminded her of some kind of old Hollywood movie set. Wide windows looked out on a sky glittering with stars. Maggie stood in the center of the dance floor, surrounded by laughing, beautiful couples who danced in circles around her. The band on the stage played jazz, so loud that Maggie felt it in her bones, and she had to blink to take in the spectacle around her.

"Fancy seeing you here, doll."

She whirled around, absently noticing the red dress that spun with her, and gaped at the man behind her. " _Bucky_."

He looked just like he had that first night they danced, smartly dressed in a navy blue suit with his long hair brushed and looking so, so soft. His grey-blue eyes glowed as he looked at her, and a small smile lifted his lips. His metal hand glinted. Dancing couples swirled behind him in streams of color, but Maggie only saw him.

She blinked, and suddenly she was in his arms and dancing, his right hand warm on the small of her back and his metal hand linked with hers. Maggie could barely breathe. The steps filtered back into her memory and she moved with him, stepping and turning and twisting. A bubble of something glittering, radiant, expanded in her chest. She looked up into Bucky's face, finally there before her, and tears welled in her eyes.

"I miss you," she breathed. She slid her hand up his shoulder to cup his jaw, like she had that night when she'd first kissed him. His heart beat slow under his warm skin. Behind him, a child with dark eyelashes pirouetted in a flash of golden light.

Bucky's eyes softened, became sad. "I miss you too, doll." He smelled so good, and the feeling of him there in front of her was dizzying. "But that's not your line."

In the corner of the dance hall a thousand lights snapped into existence, shuttering like camera flashes. Maggie winced and hid her face in Bucky's shoulder.

But Bucky stepped back and turned her, and she spun and spun and spun. Her head tilted back and she saw the chandelier, a big black Vibranium orb that hung on a chain. It glowed purple before her eyes.

"What's my line?"

Bucky pulled her in close the way she liked, so she was wrapped up in the flesh and metal warmth of him, and she felt close to flying. He bent his head and his lips brushed by her ear.

"Wake up."

 

She jerked awake to the feeling of hands under her back and legs. She cried out and instinctively kicked away, yelping when there was a short, sickening drop and then the hard bite of concrete on her side. It was bright, so bright, and the light speared into her eyes and made her blind.

"Whoa, whoa, Maggie. Are you okay?" Tony's voice. Tony was here, he would… she was okay.

She lifted her hand, squinting, and managed to block out the blazing light. She fumbled around, feeling the rough surface of asphalt beneath her, and struggled into a sitting position. A dozen technicolors flashed across her vision and she swayed. "Whoa."

A hand settled on her shoulder, and she blinked enough to bring Tony's face into focus. He stared intently into her eyes, his hand firm on her shoulder. But then a second later his face swirled into streams of eddying color like a Van Gogh painting, and Maggie blinked again. " _Whoa._ "

"Maggie?"

She cast a sweeping look at her surroundings – they were outside, she thought, on the runway outside the… where had they been? The sun shone bright above them, and the air was cool on her skin. Tony wore his armor, and the colors hurt to look at. Her vision turned back to her raised hand and she wiggled her blurry fingers.

"Maggie…" Tony repeated, his brow creased. "Are you… high?"

"Oh, I…" she swallowed and closed her eyes, then had to open them again to stop the world spinning. "Yeah, I think I might be. Are you going to arrest me?"

He stared at her. "Uh, no."

A blast of sound pierced Maggie's ears and she winced, and would have fallen flat on her back if Tony hadn't steadied her. She heard clanking footsteps, and then Rhodey's voice. "Is she okay?"

"Her pupils are the size of saucers and she thinks I'm going to bust her for being under the influence," Tony replied.

Maggie frowned. His words were casual, but he sounded worried. He did that a lot.

"M'fine," she said, because Tony worried too much. "What…" she frowned, thinking through the fog clouding her brain. "There were… people. A child. What happened?" She almost said  _they were dancing_ , but that didn't seem right.

Tony's eyes softened. "The Maggia were pumping the basement full of a sedative gas to keep their captives compliant, and  _someone_ went straight in without checking the environment beforehand."

Maggie frowned again. "Stupid."

"Yeah," Rhodey said. "But we've vented the basement now and we're getting the captives out. How do you feel?"

She swallowed. "Blurry."

"Alright," Tony said with a sigh. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. says the gas is non-lethal, so you should be alright until we get you to Dr Cho back home. Let's get you up."

His metal hands moved to her arm and new, silver metal hands appeared under her other arm. They heaved, and suddenly Maggie's head was spinning and her stomach lurched, but she was on her feet. She staggered even with the armored support, her legs forgetting how to hold her weight.

"Okay Mags, that's it."

For a few steps across the tarmac she was fine, but then all of a sudden the hands on her became too much, constricting and cold and filled with memories of lightning chairs and forgetting. Panic flared in her chest and shot outwards, turning her cold.

"Let me go!" she cried. She planted her feet and  _pushed,_ shaking the hands loose, and staggered away. She couldn't  _think_ – she was... was this a malfunction?

Red-and-gold turned and held up his hands. "Okay, calm down," he said in a low voice. "We're just trying to help you. You're not in your right mind."

She held up both hands, warding off the blurry metal men. "Stay away!" her mind reeled, searching for a threat. "M-my boyfriend's one hundred years old but he'll beat you up," she mumbled, then held up her fists and squinted at them. "If I don't get t'you first."

The two men in front of her went rigid and shared a glance, and Maggie cocked her head. "I'm not meant to tell you that, am I?"

Tony sighed, and with a roll of his shoulders the red and gold suit retracted, leaving him in a dark undersuit that didn't hurt her eyes so much. "It's okay, Maggot, I already knew that. Your boyfriend already beat me up, remember?" He took two steps toward her.

She frowned at him. "You took his arm off."

Rhodey glanced at Tony. "You took Barnes' arm off? Which one?"

"Th' shiny one," Maggie slurred, listing sideways. "Liked that one, it made funny noises." She thought about it. "Other one's alright too, s'warm."

Tony made a face. "Eugh, okay, I don't want to hear this. Yes I took your boyfriend's arm off, Maggot, but you know damn well why I did it and we both know you don't blame me for it."

Maggie's eyes welled with sudden tears. "I don't," she gasped, and stumbled forwards so she could grab Tony's arm. He winced at her tight grip. "I don't blame you, I'd have done the same thing. I did do the same thing. I…" she blinked for a moment, the light and the talking making her dizzy. "I love you Tony, I'm so sorry, I'm–" she hiccuped.

"Oh geez," he sighed, and reached up to support her shoulders again. "Okay, we really don't need to be talking about this of all things while you're high. Let's get you back to the Quinjet and get you some water."

With Rhodey's help Tony managed to get Maggie back inside the Quinjet, though she staggered all over the place like a sailor in a storm. The drug made her see things: flashing lights at the corner of her vision, shifting shapes on the ground. They lowered her into a seat and strapped her in, and Tony held her hand as she drank some water.

After taking a long gulp, she pulled the bottle away from her lips and stared at it. Then, before Tony could stop her, she upended the bottle and poured it over her head.

He batted the bottle away. "Jesus Christ, what are you–"

"Y'know, Charles Bukowski said that people run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water?"

Tony blinked.

Maggie shifted uncomfortably in her seat and grumbled: "I wonder if he bathes in his clothes. Goddamn asshole."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Are you serious? You can barely speak and you can pronounce Charles freaking Bukowski?" He shook his head at her and wiped her bedraggled hair off her face. "You're something else, Maggie."

"Where's Vision?" she blurted, suddenly leaning forward as if she might see him just outside the cockpit. Tony pushed her back down.

"He's clearing up, he'll be back soon. He's worried about you but we told him you'd be okay."

"Will I be okay?" she asked, her eyes wide.

Tony eyed her for a moment, his head cocked, then lowered himself into the seat beside her. She was still holding his hand. "Yeah, Magpie. You're going to be okay."

"Okay. I might sleep now."

"I think that's a good idea."

"Did you get that kid out of the cage?"

"Yeah, we did."

"Okay. Good night."

"Night, Maggie. Sleep tight."

 

* * *

 

When Maggie woke up the next day to a splitting headache and a mind full of embarrassing memories, she tried to smother herself in her pillow. But Tony, who had sat beside her bed in the medical wing all night, pulled the pillow away and told her how the rest of the mission had turned out. All the captives were being returned to their families, and the Maggia were off to prison.

"I'm so sorry," Maggie moaned. "I was an idiot for rushing in without checking, and then… I'm sorry you had to deal with me like that. I was… really stupid."

"Nah, it was a nice change," he said, punching her lightly in the shoulder. "Are you feeling alright? Still blurry?"

"Well I'm not high any more. I'm… embarrassed, I guess. I really am sorry."

"You don't have to be," he replied, and… there was far more weight in his words than she'd expected. Maggie met his eyes, and saw in their darkness that he wasn't just talking about her slurring and stumbling. She cast her mind back to exactly what she'd said, and…  _oh._

_You don't have to be sorry_. Tony met her gaze, still and serious.

She swallowed. "Oh. Tony…" she opened her mouth, searching for words, but she wasn't sure what she was going to say until she found herself saying: "Thank you."

"All good. And for what it's worth…" he glanced away for a moment, then met her eyes again. "I'm sorry too."

"You don't have to be," she whispered.

"Neither do you." They watched each other for a few long moments, until a familiar teasing look slid over Tony's features and he squeezed her arm. "So, Charles Bukowski, huh?"

Maggie groaned and pulled her pillow over her face again.

 

* * *

 

September, 2017  
Stark Mansion, New York City

Maggie sat by herself in the room that had become her study in the mansion, sorting through piles of documents relating to a HERACLES case she'd been asked to consult on. F.R.I.D.A.Y. played soft music in the background, and a muted TV screen in the corner played the news.

She'd found herself a bit at odds the past few days, since the rest of the team had gone to an international law enforcement conference in Italy. Maggie had originally planned to go, but then the Accords Committee got antsy about her leaving the country while not on a mission, and uninvited her. So she'd taken herself back into the city to do some solo sightseeing, and to work on some HERACLES business. She didn't mind it that much – she loved Tony, Rhodey, and Vision, but being around them all day got frustrating at times.

Chewing on her lip, Maggie leaned back in her desk chair and her eyes drifted to the silent TV screen. Suddenly, her spine stiffened.

_ATTACK IN QUEENS: LAW ENFORCEMENT ON THE SCENE_

The headline scrolled beneath footage of a sandstone and glass building with the doors hanging off their hinges, as smoke rolled from the roof. After a second, the image cut to blurry, shaky footage of some kind of… metal man?

"F.R.I.D.A.Y., volume," Maggie grit out.

The TV volume came in just in the middle of the newsreader's report: "– after police received reports of a robbery at the Global Savings Bank in Queens at around three PM this afternoon. The situation then became a standoff between police and, as you can see, some kind of robot." The screen cut to helicopter footage above a four-lane road in the middle of Queens, cars abandoned in the middle of the street and people fleeing. The police had set up a blockade at either end of the street, their cars flashing blue and red. The footage zoomed in on the no-man's land between the blockades, on a glinting metal form. "Witnesses say the robot 'appeared out of nowhere' in the middle of the bank's foyer, proceeded to raid the safes, and then broke out the front doors. Police are baffled about how to deal with the apparently highly weaponized robot, which – oh, I'm getting reports that Spider-Man has arrived at the scene."

Again the footage changed, this time to what looked like a hand-held news camera on the ground behind the police blockade. People screamed, and Maggie finally got her first close look at the 'robot' – it was humanoid and stood nearly eight feet tall, glinting silver in the afternoon sun. Its limbs were blocky and well-armored: Maggie spotted gun turrets, spikes, flamethrower nozzles, and bulky armor. It didn't have a face, just a blank metal block at the top of its body. So not an Iron Man knockoff then.

The camera swung to film Spider-Man swinging down from a nearby building, his bright red and blue suit cutting through the drifting smoke. Maggie's heart leaped into her throat. At Spider-Man's appearance the robot widened its stance and then… for a second Maggie thought it was falling apart, but the metal pieces falling off the robot stopped before they hit the ground, shuddered, and then hovered back into the air.

_Drones_ , Maggie realized as she spotted the spinning rotors. The drones swarmed into the air around the robot like angry hornets and started firing at Spider-Man, who zipped out of the way in the nick of time.  _Weaponized drones._

Maggie came back to herself with a jolt, and stood up so fast that her chair went toppling. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., what the hell is going on?"

"The robot appears to be a Dreadnought," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied. "It's a scrapped HYDRA experiment."

"So what is it doing in Queens?"

"Someone must have found an old prototype and re purposed it. The Dreadnought was designed as an anti-infantry weapon; it's a structure of titanium steel alloy, with an artificial intelligence to guide it. It's strong, agile, and highly skilled in combat. Initial designs also indicate that it can be packed down to briefcase size, so that's likely how it was snuck into the bank."

"And the drones?" Maggie asked, rushing for the study door and flinging it open.

"… apparently a new addition."

"Fantastic. Call the emergency Accords Committee line for me."

The Committee picked up just as Maggie dashed through the front door of the mansion and fired up her nanotech. Her wings unfurled from her back, tearing through her shirt, and her uniform slid out from her wing moorings and bracelets and flowed across her body.

"Yes?" came Ross's irritated voice. Maggie cursed internally. The emergency line went to whichever of the Committee members was available and had the clearance to authorize Avenger action. She'd been hoping for  _anyone_  else, really.

"Uh, the giant death robot in New York?" Once her uniform closed over her feet, she flared her wings and leaped into the sky.

A minute of silence passed over the line, which Maggie used to gain height and get her bearings before jetting in the direction of Queens. She shot past skyscrapers and over busy streets, the wind in her face.

Finally Ross replied: "Emergency services are on the ground."

"Yeah, and Spider-Man, but it looks like they need all the help they can get. Can I get the green light on this?"

Again Ross met her with silence for a few moments. Then: "The situation seems to be under control."

She ground her teeth. "Ross, I've got eyes on the situation and it's hanging by a thread. They need backup, that thing is built for destruction."

"That's not your call, Stark." Another long pause. "I'm on the line with the rest of the Committee, we're going to send in the other Avengers."

"Are you serious?" Maggie veered up and skimmed the top of an apartment building, scaring the crap out of some poor soul on the roof. His small white face stared after her, mouth open and eyes wide. "The others are halfway around the world, it'll take them hours to get here. I'm  _in_ Manhattan!"

"There's already one enhanced person on the scene and his Accords approval is thin enough–"

"Ross, come  _on._ Our job is to protect people!"

"You can't just go wherever you like, Ms Stark, we'll need approval from the NYPD. Hold the line."

"No–" she was met with honest-to-god  _hold music_ , and she growled frustratedly as she flew. "God  _dammit._ " She channeled her frustration by pushing her wings to their max and keeping an eye on the unfolding situation in Queens on her HUD – Spider-Man was flipping and diving through the cloud of drones, trying to get at the Dreadnought. The Dreadnought itself was advancing toward the north police blockade, laying down fire. She tapped into the police comms and heard their desperate calls for backup, followed by an order to evacuate their position.

"Come on, come on…" She shot over the East River and over the bustling brick buildings of Jackson Heights. She could see the smoke unfurling from the bank, and as she closed in she picked up the sound of gunfire.

She'd just caught a glimpse of Spider-Man, a red and blue blur somersaulting above a distant rooftop, when the irritating hold music stopped.

"Alright, Wyvern," said Ross. "You've got the green light."

She grit her teeth. "Great, because I'm already here." She hung up on Ross just as she shot over the last line of buildings, her wings spread wide and her eyes darting.

The situation had devolved into chaos: the police fled under the Dreadnought's onslaught of gunfire and bursts of flame, and Spider-Man desperately tried to get past the drones long enough to help the police. Dozens of web threads hung from buildings, lamp posts and the nearby elevated train tracks, from where Spider-Man had desperately swung out of the way of the ruthless drones.

Maggie took two seconds to assess the situation, and then she dove.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Maggie's suit, I drew inspiration from two MCU suits: the Wasp's uniform, because it is frankly awesome and might be one of the first female superhero suits I've seen that is about functionality and strength rather than objectifying the hero (also she's got the retractable cowl thing that Maggie's suit has), and also the Daredevil suit from the TV show – that's exactly the color scheme that Maggie would go for.
> 
> There's just one more chapter left before we go on hiatus. I think you'll all enjoy it a lot, but still - I'm kind of in shock that things are coming even to this temporary end, after all I've been posting at least a chapter a week for the better part of a year. But I've been working on the one shots (the title of that series will be All The Little Lights) and I currently have three ready to be posted! So a couple days after I post the last chapter of the Wyvern I'll put up the first one shot. I can't wait to show you guys all the little moments planned for that series!
> 
> R.E. Captain Marvel: It doesn't come out until next week here, so I haven't seen it yet though I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see it. So no spoilers in any reviews or PMs please!


	80. Chapter 80

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY BUCKY BARNES! Our boy is the best looking 102 year old in the MCU.

As Maggie cut through the sky toward the road, she instinctively searched out the red Spider-Man suit. Peter had flipped past three of the drones and swung toward the Dreadnought, snagging the robot's extended arm with webbing and yanking it sideways to divert the stream of gunfire. He saved the police officers from the volley of bullets, but he hadn't spotted a fourth drone wheeling to aim its submachine guns at him.

But it turned out that whoever had made the drones hadn't considered making them resistant to Adamantium-based nanotech. Maggie flew right through the drone, the sharp edge of her right wing cutting it cleanly in half and sending it careening to the ground in a shower of metal parts.

Spider-Man looked over at the screeching noise, and his mask lenses widened. "Ms Stark?" he exclaimed, then yelped and ducked to avoid a sweeping punch from the Dreadnought. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I heard that there's a good beer garden in Queens." Maggie flipped backwards and fired energy blasts at the Dreadnought. It staggered, but the blasts didn't make a dent. It didn't even turn its blank metal head to observe her. "What do you think I'm doing here?" The drones registered her presence and opened fire, so she twisted into evasive manoeuvres. She swooped under and around the train tracks, and swerved to avoid Peter as he swung away from the Dreadnought, which blasted two streams of fire into the air.

"Karen says this thing's a  _Dreadnought_ ," Peter said breathlessly as he fired webbing at the drones. "Which – cool name, and I think I might know who made it, but I have no idea how to fight it. I've never fought anything that wasn't alive before."

"I don't know how to fight it either," Maggie shouted back, trying to cut through another drone and cursing when it buzzed just out of reach. She mentally filed the knowledge that Peter knew who was behind this. "But think it through, Spider-Man. Big metal robot, small agile drones. What's the best play here?"

"Really? This isn't a training session, Ms Stark!"

Maggie dove over the police blockade, seized the vests of two officers trapped behind their car and flew them out of range. When she dropped them and returned, Peter had managed to web up one of the drones enough to send it falling out of the sky. The Dreadnought marched relentlessly down the street.

"I know it's not training, but in every situation you need to  _think._ You can't just shoot webbing at a problem and kick it until it goes away, so what's this opponent's weakness?" The Dreadnought fired a volley of machine gun rounds at her and she rolled into a ball mid-air, falling out of the sky until she'd lost enough height to flare her wings and shoot away under the train tracks again.

"Uh… rust?" Peter tried, somersaulting over the Dreadnought and trying to web him up.

"That thing's made of titanium steel alloy, try again." Maggie pinwheeled through the air and managed to clip one of the drones with her heel spurs. It pitched sideways, whirring, but steadied itself. " _Damn_." She cleared her head. "Do you remember the advice I gave you the first time we properly met? About the Vulture?"

"Uh…" she and Peter crossed paths again as he flipped over her extended wings, fending off a drone trying to bring her down. "You said something about… going for, uh, power sources, right? Hitting the crucial parts of a machine to make the rest fail."

"Great. You see a power source on that thing?"

Peter swung by the Dreadnought, his eye lenses wide. "No, but unless it's got an arc reactor any power source for a thing that strong has to be big, so I'd guess that it's in the chest."

"So let's try to crack that casing," Maggie continued. "And in the meantime, remember to target joints and hinges to decrease its mobility. What are some other weaknesses?"

Peter went to reply, then yelped as the Dreadnought swung around and fired a rocket at him. "Um, it's made of metal and electricity, so… cold? Rubber? Maybe water, if we can expose its wiring."

"Sounds like a plan to me. I'm going to go after these drones, I'm faster in the air than you and I've got more tools to rip them apart. You keep using that brain of yours to bring down the Dreadnought."

Despite what she'd just said, Maggie saw an opening as the drones cleared for a moment above the Dreadnought. She swooped, and in half a second had channeled nanotech out along her extended heel spurs and into the spike ball she'd formed her first time flying with her new wings. The ball slammed into the Dreadnought's shoulder as she soared over it, obliterating one of its shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and carving a deep gouge in its plating.

Peter whooped. "You have a  _tail_?"

"When I need one," she replied, the nanotech already sliding back into her heel spurs. The drones buzzed angrily and converged on her. "Now let's get to work."

With the drones focused on Maggie Peter was free to swing around the Dreadnought, tripping it up with webbing, punching its joints and doing everything he could to slow or maim it. In the air Maggie pinwheeled and twisted, firing bolts of energy at the drones and trying to catch them. She'd developed a quick, efficient way of dispatching them: she'd use her nanotech boosters to get a final surge of speed to catch up with one of the elusive drones, then she'd seize it with her clawed gauntlets or her heel spurs and rip it to shreds.

The road was a mess of torn metal and bullet casings. The air echoed with gunfire, the Dreadnought's metal footsteps, and the  _whoosh_ as Maggie sliced through the sky. F.R.I.D.A.Y. coordinated with law enforcement, keeping them and the civilians out of range of the fight.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie watched Peter swing around the corner of a building, web up a fallen metal shard and hurl it at the Dreadnought. The robot batted away the metal but the movement distracted him from Spider-Man's next movements: Peter zipped toward the Dreadnought and slammed his feet into its knee, sending it falling into a kneel.

"Take  _that_!" Peter whooped as he fired webbing at the nearby train tracks to swing away.

"Spider-Man, look out–"

Maggie's warning wasn't quick enough. As Peter webbed away the Dreadnought flung out a fist, metal spikes flicking out of its knuckles, and slashed Spider-Man on his way past. Even from the air Maggie heard the  _rip_ as the Spider-Man suit gave way, and saw the spray of scarlet blood that shimmered in the air. Peter cried out and tumbled to the ground, webbing forgotten.

" _Pe_ –  _Spider-Man_!" Maggie cried, and with a lash of her claws sent the last drone careening out of the sky. But it didn't fall as fast as Maggie, who flipped backwards and dove at the rising Dreadnought. Spider-Man lay on the ground twenty feet from the metal humanoid, clutching the open wound in his chest.

" _Hey_!" The Dreadnought turned, and Maggie landed heel-spurs-first in its chest. She beat her wings and  _wrenched_ , her heel spurs pulling apart the metal plating and exposing a labyrinth of sparking wires underneath. She reared one foot back, ready to plunge it straight into that forest of wires, when she heard a high wine of something powering up and–

_Lightning._ It erupted in the base of her foot where it connected with the Dreadnought and arced up the metal on her bones, locking up her muscles and sending her head snapping back in an agonized cry. It reminded her of metal plates on her face, of lying immobilized on a safe room floor as HYDRA's kill switch electrified her entire body.

It was only gravity that saved her. As she froze up she fell backwards and her heel spur slipped out of the Dreadnought's titanium chest. The instant they were no longer connected the current broke, and Maggie gasped as movement flooded back into her aching limbs.

She crunched to the tarmac and her wings buckled. Standing tall above her, the Dreadnought turned its hard, blank face downward, as if it was looking at her. That high wine filled the air and in its exposed chest Maggie saw flashes and sparks of electricity.  _An electrical charge conducted throughout its body to prevent close-quarters combat_ , she realized.  _Clever._

Her admiration for the design quickly vanished when the Dreadnought lifted its spike-knuckled fist and tried to put it through her head. She rolled to the side and the spikes crunched through the tarmac.

Maggie scrambled backwards over the rough surface of the road as the Dreadnought bore down on her, buzzing with electricity, swiping and trying to catch her. She tried to lift her wings to fly away, but the Dreadnought darted at the flared metal faster than she'd thought it could move, and she had to retract them.

The Dreadnought swiped again and she ducked just in time, spotting the red-and-blue figure of Peter getting to his feet on the other side of the road. "Spider-Man!" she called, trying to dodge sideways. "Spider-Man, are you okay?"

He groaned, but he'd managed to stand up. Maggie had to look away again when the Dreadnought almost grabbed her shoulder.

"I'm alright!" Peter called. "But get ready to get out of the way!"

"Oh, I'm ready now," she said, leaning backwards as the Dreadnought just missed knocking off her head. It had pinned her down under the train tracks, too fast for her to run from and too electrified for her to fight. Her energy blasts had no effect, not even on the gaping hole in its chest. The underside of the train tracks flickered with the red of her blasters and the Dreadnought's electric blue sparks.

Peter was doing…  _something_ on the other side of the road. She caught flashes of his suit, and then heard a  _clang_  and a sudden rush, like the sound of a river. She glanced over and saw that he'd kicked the top off a fire hydrant, sending a geyser of rushing water jetting into the air and raining down on the tarmac.

Seconds later, the Dreadnought reeled when a car tire bounced off the back of its head.

It turned, and Maggie took her chance: part of her wanted to attack, to use the Dreadnought's distraction against it, but the rest of her just  _knew_ that Peter had a plan. So she dove sideways, lifting her wings and doing as Peter said:  _get out of the way._

She soared out from under the train tracks just in time to see Peter slam a manhole cover on top of the gushing fire hydrant.

With a noise like a tsunami, the abruptly-diverted jet of water hurtled across all four lanes of the road and right into the Dreadnought.

If the Dreadnought had been at full functionality, it might have sustained the geyser of highly-pressurized water. But when the water hit it, it had a gaping hole in its chest exposing its central wiring and an electrical current coursing across its body.

The Dreadnought seized up, shuddered, and with an unholy shriek it imploded in a shower of sparks, metal, and water.

The resulting blast wave hit Maggie in the back as she flew, knocking her into a shopfront on the other side of the road. She crunched through the glass and broke her fall against three mannequins.

For a few seconds she just lay on her back on the shop floor, her wings askew and her body soaking wet. On the road outside the shop she heard rushing water, distant sirens, and a metallic pitter-patter as pieces of the demolished Dreadnought rained down. Other than that, it was finally quiet.

 

Her breath caught in her chest.

_Peter_.

She clambered to her feet and hopped out of the shattered shopfront, eyes darting until she spotted Peter: busy webbing up the fire hydrant to slow the water flow.

"Well done, kid," she said breathlessly, jogging toward him. "Good call with the water, I couldn't have gotten close enough to –  _whoah._ " As she spoke Peter finished webbing up the fire hydrant, and when he moved to turn around he yelped, clutched his side and dropped to one knee. Maggie lurched forward to steady him, her heart pounding.

She pulled his hand away from his side and hissed at what she found: the Dreadnought had cut right through his suit and carved a gash in the teenager's ribcage. Maggie was no doctor, but she'd seen enough wounds and enough bloodloss to know that this was not to be taken lightly. " _Peter_ ," she murmured, looking up at his masked face. He swayed where he knelt on the ground.

"I'm alright, Ms Stark," he said. "Just need to… need to catch my breath."

"Stay here."

She darted away, tore one of the shop mannequin's shirts off, and then ran back to Peter. She pressed the shirt against his wound and pulled one of his hands over it. "Hold this tight."

"Ow."

"That means you're doing it right."

"Hey, thanks for coming, Ms Stark. I mean don't get me wrong, I could've taken that thing, but it was good to, y'know, have the help."

"Sure thing, Mr Hero. Hold still."

"Whoah, what… what are you doing?" Peter yelped, but Maggie had already stooped, picked him up under his knees and the back of his shoulders, and scooped him into her arms. " _Ms Stark_ , put me down!"

But Maggie ignored him. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., liaise with local emergency services and make sure they know the threat is cleared. And send in Damage Control."

That done, she spread her wings and took off. Peter yelped in her arms and flailed, then winced as his wound pained him. After that he kept still.

"Ms Stark, where are you taking me?"

Once she'd got enough height she turned as carefully as she could in the air, trying not to jostle the wounded teenager too much. He felt so light in her arms – light, but strong. He was soaking wet, and Maggie felt the warmth of his blood against her right arm. She wanted to put that Dreadnought back together piece by piece so she could  _shred_ it.

She swallowed. "Well I thought about taking you back to the Facility–"

" _No_ , oh my god–"

"– but then I figured that'd just freak you out, and it's too far anyway  _so_ " – she paused to check her bearings – "I'm going to take you back to your house. Your wound's not too bad, I can patch you up there."

His eye lenses widened. "Wait, but… I've got a secret identity!"

"I already know who you are and where you live, Peter. I won't let anyone see us."

She felt him scowling at her, but sensed that he was done arguing with the plan. She focused on flight lines and weight balance, while still keeping an eye on F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s progress back at the scene, until Peter spoke again.

"Are you sure you can take me the whole way?"

She laughed. "You weigh the same as like, an angry cat. I'm fine."

He went quiet again. His hand was still pressed to the stolen shirt over his wound, his fingers rigid. "You know, Mr Stark once had to carry me like this. The Vulture dropped me in a lake. And it wasn't even Mr Stark that got me out, the armor was empty."

"Did he let you think he was in it? He does that, it's really annoying."

"Not on purpose, I don't think? He was in India."

Maggie broke her concentration for a moment to smile at him. "I remember him calling me from India all worried about some protege of his. I didn't figure out that it was  _you_ until later."

"Mr Stark was… worried about me?" He cocked his head at her.

"I think he worries about you much more than he'd like you to know," She confided, as they closed in on Peter's aunt's apartment. "But he knows you can handle yourself. You did really well today, Peter."

"Thanks, Ms Stark."

"It's Maggie, c'mon. And also, when you're feeling better we're going to have a chat about who was behind the Dreadnought today."

"It's just some guy who worked with the Vulture, he calls himself the Tinkerer because he takes old tech and weapons and experiments with them. But I can take him, I've just got to track him down."

With Peter's directions, Maggie arrived outside Peter's apartment and hovered, letting him slide open his bedroom window with his free hand. She looked down at him. "You don't have to do it alone, Peter."

"Really, it's not a big deal. The guy sticks to Queens mostly." He slid out of her arms, tension in every line of his body, and struggled through the window. She reached out a hand to steady him and frowned at the streak of blood he left behind.

"Today seemed like a big deal," she said softly.

"Right," he huffed. He dropped into his desk chair with a groan. "But I won't let him do something like that again."

Maggie half-smiled at that as she slipped through the window. She knew that Peter needed to feel trusted, so she didn't push the matter, but she made a mental note to keep a very close eye on him.

Once she'd climbed through the window, Maggie took half a second to survey the room: small compared to the wide expanses of the Facility, with a bunk bed, desk, and wardrobe. It was filled with controlled clutter: lego models, posters, clothes draped over various surfaces, high school textbooks. A teenage boy's room. She smiled, then pulled her goggles up her forehead and scowled at Peter.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking… a breather," he huffed, hand still pressed to the stolen t-shirt against his side. He'd pulled off his mask and leaned back in his chair.

"You need to lie down," she ordered. "Where's your aunt?"

"Aunt May's at… work," he grunted. He staggered to his feet, made the three short steps to his bed, and fell into it. He closed his eyes and sighed. "Really Ms Stark, I've got this. Thank you for the lift but–"

"Sure, I'll leave the teenager bleeding on his bunk bed," she snorted. "Stay there and I'll get some supplies. First aid kit?"

"Kitchen."

Maggie would be worried, but there was color in his cheeks and he hadn't lost  _too_ much blood. Still, she ordered: "Don't sleep," before she opened his bedroom door and strode out. She was still in full uniform with her wings tucked neatly against her body. Thankfully the nanotech had dried itself out on the flight over.

The apartment was small too, but felt like a  _home_ ; it had sunny yellow walls, blue curtains, and another controlled mess of books, framed photographs, and ornaments that seemed to say  _we live here._ Peter's bedroom was right across the hall from the kitchen so she strode in, glancing around – only to stop dead at the sight of a large boy standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a glass of water.

He looked to be about Peter's age; wearing jeans, scuffed sneakers and an old maroon sweater as he nodded his head to the song playing through his headphones. Maggie had barely a second to process her shock before the boy looked up, saw her standing in the kitchen entrance, and dropped his glass of water.

Maggie darted forward and caught the glass, spilling some, and looked up with a scowl. She  _really_ didn't need the neighbors knocking right now.

The boy's eyes darted over her, and she could only imagine how she seemed to him – dressed in her intimidating red and black uniform, with large metal wings folded up against her back. The boy's mouth dropped open and he took three big steps away from her, his eyes as round as coins.

Maggie softened – he was just scared. Of her.

She straightened, and set his glass of water on the counter. "Who are you?"

"What?" His voice was high, wobbly.

She rolled her eyes and leaned forward to pull his headphones out. "Who are you?"

"N-Ned Leeds, ma'am. Are you… are you here looking for Peter? Because I am  _not_ Peter–"

"I know you're not Peter. And I'm not looking for Peter."

His eyes went, if possible, rounder. "You were looking for  _me_?"

She sighed. "No. Wait here, don't move."

The boy – Ned – went rigid, and she retraced her steps to Peter's bedroom.

Peter, fiddling with the t-shirt pressed against his wound, looked up when she opened the door and slid inside. "Look Ms Stark you really don't need to hang around, I can take care of this–"

"But you don't have to. Now,  _please_ tell me you know a kid called Ned Leeds."

"Ned? How do you know that name?"

She grimaced. "We just met."

Peter's face paled. "Oh god. Okay, uh… well he already knows that I'm Spider-Man–"

Maggie sighed. "Oh, good." Without further explanation, she turned again and walked back into the kitchen. Ned Leeds stood exactly where she'd left him, his eyes still round and his limbs frozen by his sides as his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. He'd really taken her order to heart.

"Mr Leeds?"

"Yes ma'am?"

"Would you mind preparing some warm salt water while I find the first aid kit?"

His muscles loosened slightly, so he no longer looked like a statue, and his voice was breathy as he replied: "Uh… sure."

 

Things were only slightly awkward as Maggie reappeared in Peter's bedroom with Ned Leeds by her side. He hadn't quite recovered from his shock, but the sight of his friend still half-wearing the Spider-Man suit, keeping pressure on a large gash in his side, loosened his tongue. Maggie pulled Peter's hand away and cleaned the wound as Ned asked Peter frantic questions about his injury.

"Are you gonna die?"

"No, Ned, I'm fine!"

"Did the robot do that?"

"Robot – you saw the fight?"

"It was on the news! We were meant to study for algebra, remember? But you weren't here so your aunt said I could stay here and wait for you, and I got a Twitter update about a Spider-Man sighting so I turned on the news to watch. That thing was  _awesome_. You beat it, right?"

"Yeah." Peter winced as Maggie pushed a saline-drenched gauze strip into his wound.

"And I can't believe you fought with  _the Wyvern_!" Ned gushed. "And brought her back to your house!"

Maggie looked up, her mouth quirked. "Hello, by the way."

"Hello," he breathed, then turned to Peter with round eyes. Maggie saw him mouth  _oh my god_  out of the corner of her eye.

She rolled her eyes. "Mr Leeds, would you mind handing me those alcohol wipes?"

He fumbled for them and handed her seven. An awkward silence fell. Maggie knelt on the floor beside Peter's bed as she efficiently but gently dressed his wound, Peter stared at the bottom of the top bunk with his teeth gritted and hands balled by his sides, and Ned sat against the wall as he stared at Maggie.

"Hey, who's the woman in all the pictures out there?" Maggie said to break the silence. "That your aunt?"

"Yeah, that's Aunt May," Peter gritted out.

"Hm. She's pretty."

Peter's head rolled to look at her with incredulous eyes. "Jeez, you  _and_ Mr Stark?"

She cackled. "Mr Leeds, butterfly bandages please."

He handed them over, his eyes still fixed on her. She'd seen him perk up at the mention of her brother, and sure enough…

"You're Mr Stark's sister?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Is it true you've been training Peter?"

"That's true. He's doing very well." A smile flickered across Peter's face, but then she pinched his torn skin together and he hissed.

Ned was relentless: "Is it true you beat up Peter in Germany?"

Peter scowled. "Hey–"

Maggie laughed and replied: "I would have, if I really wanted to."

"Oh wow," Ned said. "Peter said you have knives in your feet, is  _that_  true?"

She raised an eyebrow at Peter, and he blushed. "Yeah, it's true. See?" She paused for a moment to stand, lift one leg and extend her heel spur. It gleamed darkly in the warm bedroom.

Ned Leeds looked like he might implode. "That is  _awesome._ Is it true you were partners with the Winter Soldier?"

Maggie blinked. Of all the questions… she fought to keep her hand from drifting to the Kimoyo bead at her neck, and tried not to let the question sting too much. He'd surprised her, but at the fascinated, excited look in his eye she sighed. He was just an excited kid. She and Bucky weren't really real to him.

"Yes," she murmured, and lowered herself again to keep taping Peter's wound together.

Peter, who had been eyeing her face intently, shot Ned a pointed look.

Ned just blinked. "What?"

Maggie shook her head to clear her mind of the sudden melancholy. "Oh, Mr Leeds – Peter left some blood on the windowsill, are you alright to clean it up?" She knew some people got queasy at the sight of blood.

"I can do it!" he replied eagerly, before swiping a clean cloth and hustling to the window.

"Sorry," Peter muttered once his friend was out of earshot. "Sometimes Ned can be…" He sighed and then added, with a roll of his eyes: "I think he still thinks I might lay eggs."

"Well that's ridiculous," she replied, laying another butterfly bandage. "Only female spiders lay eggs."

Peter snorted.

"As a male spider, you can look forward to your mate eating you one day." She smiled sunnily at him as he gaped. At the window, Ned snickered.

"So you two are friends?" Maggie asked.

"Yeah," Peter replied. "Ned's my guy in the chair." Ned turned to give them a double thumbs up, dangling the bloody cloth from one hand.

"Your… guy in the chair?"

"You know," Ned said. "The guy in the chair! Hacking the internet, looking at maps, giving information over the comms. I'm the guy in the chair. Don't you have a guy in the chair?"

The corner of Maggie's mouth crept up. "I think I used to  _be_ the guy in the chair until recently. And now…" She thought of Agent Asfour, and the room full of analysts back at the facility. "I suppose I do. Mr Leeds, there's a… look, there's another bloodstain on that star destroyer. Peter, how did you get blood  _there_?"

"I'll be more careful with my blood next time," Peter replied, and she couldn't quite decide if he was sassing her or if he genuinely thought that was something to feel bad about. Also the 'next time' was concerning.

Ned looked up from cleaning the lego model. "Wait, star destroyer? You know Star Wars?"

"Are there people in the world who don't?" she asked. Her research with Bucky had told her that it was essential viewing, a classic, and Rhodey and Tony had almost been disappointed that they hadn't been the ones to introduce it to her. She looked up and saw Ned staring at her as if she'd come from another planet. He turned to Peter.

"Peter,  _Ms Stark_ has seen  _Star Wars_!"

"I know, Ned." Peter had told her all about his idea to take down Ant Man in Germany, and they'd even discussed other useful tactics to be learned from the Star Wars franchise.

"And MJ said we were nerds for still liking Star Wars–"

"MJ calls us nerds about most stuff," Peter interjected, his ears going red.

Maggie's eyebrows shot up. "Who's  _MJ_?"

Ned dropped back down beside the bed. "She's a girl at school, she's obsessed with P–"

"She's not obsessed with me!" Peter said in a high voice, the flush creeping down the back of his neck.

Maggie smirked but let him off the hook. "Alright, almost done. I just need that gauze–"

Ned handed over the bandage, and as she took it he blurted out: "I think your wings are really awesome."

She'd been surprised at how long it had taken him to mention them, to be honest. "Thanks! They're nanotech."

Both boys leaned in, as if they were children about to hear a bedtime story. Maggie smiled again and began to explain.

She only laid out the basic principles, and showed them how she could dissolve and reform her wings, but they were both entranced. It kept them quiet long enough to let her finish up dressing Peter's wound, at least, and hopefully gave them some inspiration to work in engineering in the future.

"But, uh… don't tell anyone this," she finished. "The tech's not on the public market yet. Give it a few months." She shrugged. "If you go into a degree in tech you'll probably end up learning about it at college." Months ago a sentence like that might have sounded bizarre to her. Now… it was her life.

"Awesome," Ned breathed.

Maggie smoothed down the last corner of the bandage, and then sat back on her heels. "Okay, all done. I'm no doctor though, so tomorrow I'm going to ask Happy to pick you up from school and take you to Dr Cho." Peter opened his mouth to protest, but Maggie shot him a  _look_ , and he closed his mouth again.

She reached out to cuff him on the shoulder, then got to her feet with a sigh. "Alright, I'd better go debrief. Mr Leeds, make sure he doesn't get out of that bed. He needs to heal." She moved to the window and slid it open, already thinking of her flight path back to the Facility and the paperwork she'd have to fill out.  _So much_ paperwork.

"Thank you, Ms Stark," came a small voice from the bed.

Maggie, already with one leg out the window, looked over her shoulder. Peter lay pale and tired on his bunk bed, his hair rumpled.

She bowed her head. "You were very brave today, Peter. And Mr Leeds…" the boy looked at her with eyes shining with adoration and hope, and she sighed. "You're a good friend." With that she jumped out the window, flared her wings, and soared into the sky.

 

Back in Peter's bedroom, Ned let out a sigh.

"I'm in love."

Peter snorted and shoved him away. "Gross, no you're not. C'mon, go grab my console – if I have to be stuck here we may as well play something."

 

As she flew home, Maggie stared sightlessly at the ground below. She'd been so concerned about the Dreadnought, and then Peter, but now…

Her thoughts echoed with that phone conversation she'd had with Ross.

_If this is the best the Accords can do_ , she thought,  _then it was almost a failure._ Ross could have just as easily said no – in fact she'd heard it in his voice, that he'd almost refused just because he didn't like her. Maggie would have joined the fight anyway, but then she'd be a criminal again. Just like that, everything she'd fought so hard for would be stripped away because she wouldn't let a teenager fight a death robot by himself.

An uncomfortable awareness prickled down her spine. She'd signed the Accords, fought under their rules, but today had made her realize just how tenuous her loyalty to the Accords really was.

_This allows me to help people_ , she'd told that reporter. But how long would it be before the Accords  _kept_ her from helping people?

Maggie knew exactly what she'd do when that time came.

 

* * *

 

The Avengers returned early from their conference, and after a debrief Tony squeezed her shoulder then went to look into the Tinkerer. Vision disappeared, with that look on his face that Maggie knew meant  _Wanda_ , so she found herself alone in the conference room with Rhodey.

He watched her chew her lip for a few moments, his head cocked.

"Something's bothering you."

She glanced up. "Surely you can guess."

He leaned back in his seat, his eyes sombre and serious. "I don't particularly like my guess."

"Try."

"The Accords." The air in the room seemed to dry up and freeze at the words. The words themselves were common in the Avengers Facility, but this: expressing doubts,  _questioning_ … it verged on dangerous ground.

She nodded once.

"Maggie…"

"Ross almost said no, today."

"But then he didn't."

She leveled a hard look at him. "They've said no before." Before she joined the team she'd heard of the aborted missions, the Accords holding the Avengers back from going into areas where they could have helped. The Committee had flat out told the analysts to stop looking into a certain area in Asia –  _at all_ – because the situation was too "politically complicated".

"And the world didn't end," Rhodey replied, his voice taut.

"We could have helped." He didn't have a response for that, so Maggie said once more: "He almost said no.  _They_ almost said no. Peter got hurt today, Rhodey. It might have been so much worse if I wasn't there." She leaned forward, slowly, her every muscle tense and her moves precise. "They almost said no. A group of men who've never seen combat, or if they did it was a long time ago."

Rhodey had stopped arguing back, his dark eyes steady on her.

"I have been so terrified of them manipulating me ever since they first hired me," she continued. "Because I know that if for a second they think I won't do what they want, they'll destroy me. Call me a criminal, throw me in the Raft. Take it out on the people I love." She took a deep breath. "So far things have been okay – they've got a vested interest in making sure criminals don't run free, so that's worked out. But I just  _know_ that the second something big comes up, something  _important_ , that they don't think we should get involved in…" she bit her lip. "Are we really going to back away from what needs to be done?"

Rhodey's facade of calm flickered, and he let out a tired sigh. "You sound just like Steve."

"It seems my family has a track record of getting dragged into fights by Steve Rogers," she joked, then sobered. She knew that every word she said here was important, and utterly dangerous. "I  _know_ that regulation is important, Rhodey. I know we can't just decide who falls under the hammer and who doesn't, because that makes us no better than HYDRA, but… is this really the best option?"

He looked so, so tired. This same argument had cost him his mobility already. "You got an alternative?"

"So many!" she exclaimed and shot to her feet. "For one, we need better representation in the Accords Committee – right now we've just got US armed forces and senators, and  _one_ international representative. And they're all men! How is that an accurate representation of the world, let alone the Avengers? There should be enhanced people  _on_ the committee, not just regulated by them." She started pacing, gesturing with every point. "Also, the Avengers should be brought in on negotiating the Accords since we're in the best position to know what works and what doesn't. I'm stunned the Avengers weren't involved in the legislation in the first place."

She reached the end of the room and turned, barely looking at Rhodey as she spoke. "All the bullshit about regulating  _all_ enhanced people needs to stop right now. You and I both know that Ross is still hoping for that global tracking software, and we both know that it's  _utterly_ criminal. Putting people on lists has never ended well. You don't convict people before they commit a crime, that's just the way it works. And honestly, it sounds just like Project Insight. Who knows what else they're working on and haven't told us about." A shudder rippled down her spine. "Next - vigilantes should be dealt with on a case by case basis instead of just rounded up and sent to the Raft. And speaking of the Raft" – she took a breath, one finger flying up – "the Raft needs to calm the fuck down, it's inhumane and no one there has had a trial."

She turned again, fighting off the memory of that shifting metal box in the ocean. "There should also be better options for enhanced people outside of the Avengers: schools, programs to help them control their enhancements, support groups, non prejudiced medical facilities." She thought of her brief lessons with Peter, his initial lack of any formal training and the way he drank up knowledge and skills. "Also, a training program for those who want to learn to fight."

She stopped to properly breathe, her fingers curling and uncurling, and turned to Rhodey.

His eyes were wide. "Damn, you've really put a lot of thought into this."

"Well it affects nearly every part of my life and all the people I care about, I thought it was worth a few brain cells."

Rhodey scratched his jaw, his eyes considering. "We could bring this up with the Accords Committee, you know. See if we can get some changes started, because you're right: what we've got now isn't sustainable." His jaw clenched. "Tony doesn't tell me what's going on in his head about this anymore, but I can tell he's not happy."

Maggie cocked her head. "And you?"

His eyes fell. "If it came down to it, protecting people versus doing what the Accords tell me to do?" He sighed, his focus somewhere far away. "I am a  _good_ airman, Maggie. I've done my job and I've done it right for nearly thirty years. But I'm worried about what this situation might make me do."

Maggie paced around to his side of the table and put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her. "You're a good airman. But you're a good  _person_ , too."

 

* * *

 

Over the next few weeks, she and Rhodey floated the idea of making some revisions to the Accords with the rest of the team. Tony didn't so much express his opinion on the revisions themselves as express his certainty that the Accords Committee would never go for it. Vision was interested, but distracted.

When they finally had the meeting with the Committee themselves, Rhodey got two sentences into explaining their intent before the Committee members started shooting it down. He tried to keep going, but eventually Ross got to his feet and declared: "You keep this up and we'll consider it treachery against the Accords, Colonel Rhodes." Then the Secretary turned to Maggie, his face stormy. "Was this your goal? Infiltrate and destabilize?"

"You really think I'm the destabilizing force here?" she spat back. "Just  _listen_ to us, this will help people–"

"Ms Stark, you seem to be under the impression that you are our  _colleague_ –"

Rhodey's hand appeared on Maggie's shoulder, and her head snapped sideways to look at him. "Maggie, let's go," he murmured.

Ross fell silent, his eyes dark with storm clouds. Maggie looked from Rhodey, silent and serious, to Ross, to Vision, and then Tony. Vision sat rigid in his chair, not having said much in the meeting besides expressing support for the revisions. Tony had stood in the corner with his arms crossed, his eyes darting from Maggie and Rhodey to the Accords Committee. And now… he wasn't looking at any of them. His eyes were fixed on the ground by his feet, his face unreadable.

Maggie swallowed thickly and turned back to Ross. "You won't even consider it?" she asked softly.

"We're not interested in your attempts at weakening the Avengers and the Accords, no," Ross snapped back. She looked at the rest of the Committee – their heads held high, their eyes firm. A resounding  _no._

The breath left her lungs, only to be replaced by fire. She jutted her chin and glared at Ross. "Do you remember the first thing I ever said to you?"

His eyes flickered and his mouth turned down in a scowl.  _Oh, he remembers._

Her eyes blazed. " _I was right_."

With that, she stood up and stormed out of the room.

 

A minute later the rest of the Avengers left the room as well, to find Maggie leaning with her forehead against the corridor wall, taking deep breaths. After a quick, silent exchange, Rhodey and Vision turned to head back to the common area.

Tony approached Maggie and his hand ghosted over her shoulder.

"I don't know how to fix this," she croaked.

His hand settled on her shoulder, and she let the warmth seep into her skin. Through the touch she felt what he'd been hiding for so long: how  _tired_ he was.

When he spoke, his voice was soft. "Thank you," he said. "For trying."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well friends that's a weird and sad way to leave y'all on hiatus, sorry! I know some of you were hoping for a Bucky reunion, but unfortunately that's on hold until we get to the movie storylines. (But don't worry! Have a look at the below announcement about the one shot series).
> 
> I want to take a second to thank each and every one of you so, so much – I was so nervous to first even start writing this story, and then to post it, and honestly you guys reading along and getting so excited over Maggie and her journey to become a person… it has meant the world to me. I'd have been happy if this story made even one person smile, or laugh, or cry, and to have that experience repeated over and over has been mind blowing. You are all incredible.
> 
> You guys are my mission ❤
> 
> And on that mushy note, the first half of the first installment of AU one shots will be up in a few days (probably Friday). You can follow me to get the email alert. It's called 'All The Little Lights', head on over for more Maggie & Bucky & Avengers goodness.


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